“Identifying user needs is at the heart of our business. easyfeedback has been helping us with this task for several years now. We particularly appreciate its intuitive usability and professional support.”
“We use easyfeedback for internal and external surveys—it’s fast, convenient, and easy! The uncomplicated and friendly support puts a smile on our faces, and we are delighted with the continuous development of the platform.”
Good usability is characterized by simplicity, clarity, and efficiency. When these factors come together, using a system feels intuitive and enjoyable.
To ensure that this is not just a claim but can be continuously verified, short and reliable surveys are needed.
This is where the System Usability Scale (SUS) comes in: with just ten questions, it quickly and accurately measures how user-friendly a piece of software or tool is perceived to be.
The result is a clear score that is easy to interpret and compare with other systems.
With easyfeedback, the SUS questionnaire is already available to you as a free template.
Simply sign up, deploy it, and start collecting valuable user feedback right away — with no extra effort.
And if you’d like to gain deeper insights into the user experience later on, you can flexibly expand your survey with additional questionnaires at any time.
Contents of the template:
Objectives of the survey:
Helpful features for the survey:
Data protection „made in Germany“ (GDPR)
Anonymity function for honest feedback
The SUS (System Usability Scale) is a standardized questionnaire used to evaluate the usability of systems, products, websites, or software.
It was developed by John Brooke in 1986 and remains a widely used, quick, and robust method in usability research.
Structure
The SUS consists of 10 statements (items) relating to usability and complexity.
Participants rate each statement on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree).
Examples of items:
Evaluation
The responses are converted into points according to a predefined scoring method.
The overall score ranges from 0 to 100, with 100 representing the best possible usability.
As a rough guideline:
Advantages
In the context of UX (User Experience), the System Usability Scale (SUS) is a widely used tool for quickly and consistently measuring the usability of a system.
It provides quantitative data that helps UX teams evaluate the quality of user interaction from the users’ perspective.
Purpose in UX
Integration into the UX Process
Benefits for UX Designers
Example of Use
In short: SUS is a practical, standardized UX tool that makes usability measurable, supports quick decision-making, and helps teams prioritize improvements effectively.
Here, we explain step by step how to use a SUS questionnaire (System Usability Scale):
1. Step: Preparation
Decide which system (e.g., a website, app, software, or prototype) you want to test.
Make sure that participants can try out or familiarize themselves with the system before answering the questionnaire.
2. Step: Administration
Give participants the SUS questionnaire with the 10 statements.
Participants rate each statement on a Likert scale from 1 to 5:
The items alternate between positively and negatively worded statements to avoid response bias.
Examples:
3. Step: Evaluation
Add up all adjusted values → this results in a number between 0 and 40. Result × 2.5 → gives the SUS score between 0 and 100.
4. Step: Interpretation
Important: The SUS score is not a percentage, but a comparative measure. It is generally used to compare different systems, versions, or target groups.
Short example: A participant rates Item 1 (“I would like to use the system”) with a 4 → (odd-numbered item) → 4 − 1 = 3 points. The same calculation is performed for all items, then the points are added together and multiplied by 2.5.
The SUS questions (System Usability Scale) are a standardized set of 10 questions used to evaluate the usability of a system, software, or website.
They are formulated to cover both positive and negative aspects of usability.
Structure of the SUS Questions
Topics covered:
The SUS questions are intentionally kept general so that they can be applied to any type of software or digital system.
After completion, the responses are adjusted, summed, and combined into a SUS score between 0 and 100.
The System Usability Scale (SUS) score is a proven tool for evaluating the usability of software, websites, or digital applications.
It makes it possible to measure usability objectively and compare different systems with one another.
The SUS score is calculated in five clear steps that are easy to understand even for users without a statistical background.
1. Step: Collect responses
First, users are asked to answer 10 standardized questions.
Each question is rated on a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 means “strongly disagree” and 5 means “strongly agree.”
The questions cover various aspects of usability, such as efficiency, convenience, learning effort, and confidence in the system.
2. Step: Adjust the values
After collecting the responses, the values must be adjusted for the calculation:
This step ensures that all sub-scores are interpreted in the same direction, meaning that higher values always reflect better usability.
3. Step: Add up the sub-scores
Next, all adjusted values are added together.
The result is a number between 0 and 40.
This intermediate step combines the subjective ratings of the individual SUS questions into a single sub-score.
4. Step: Multiplication
To convert the SUS score to the standard scale from 0 to 100, the sum is multiplied by 2.5.
This produces a comparable value that can be easily interpreted.
5. Step: Interpretation
The final SUS score ranges from 0 to 100.
A score above 68 is considered above average and indicates that the system has good usability. Scores below 68 indicate that there is room for improvement.
It is important to note that the SUS score is not a percentage, but a relative comparison value.
It is used to objectively compare different systems, software versions, or interface designs.
A good SUS score is generally above 68 – this value is considered the international average.
Anything above this indicates above-average usability.
Guidelines for evaluation:
Guidelines for evaluation:
The interpretation of a SUS questionnaire aims to evaluate the usability of a system and identify weaknesses.
Here is a detailed explanation:
1. Step: Understand the SUS score
The SUS score ranges from 0 to 100.
Important note: It is not a percentage, but a relative comparison value used to compare systems or versions with one another.
2. Step: Guidelines for interpretation
3. Step: Analyze the individual questions
4. Step: Compare groups
5. Step: Visualization
6. Step: Derive measures
There are industry-specific benchmarking scores for the System Usability Scale (SUS) that can serve as guidelines for evaluating the usability of a system compared with other products or industry standards.
Cross-industry average values
A comprehensive analysis of more than 500 studies shows that the average SUS score is 68, with a standard deviation of 12.5.
This means that approximately half of the systems tested achieved a score above 68, while the other half scored below it.
Digital Health Apps
A meta-analysis of 117 SUS scores from 114 digital health applications found an average score of 76.64.
However, it was found that physical activity apps skewed the overall result, with an average score of 83.28, as they demonstrated significantly higher usability scores.
Consumer Software
A study of consumer software products found an average SUS score of 76, with scores ranging from 58 to 88.
This suggests that many consumer software products offer above-average usability.
Electronic Health Records (EHR)
An example from the field of electronic health records shows that a system with a SUS score of 78 is significantly above the industry average and therefore offers a high level of usability.
Interpretation of SUS scores
A score above 68 is generally considered above average. Scores below this value indicate room for improvement.
easyfeedback can significantly simplify the evaluation of usability using the SUS (System Usability Scale) as an online survey tool.
Here is an overview of how it works:
Easy integration of the SUS questionnaire
Automatic collection of responses
Visualization and analysis
Real-time results & export
Benefits for UX designers
