Sequence Flow FAQ¶
Quick answers to common questions about Sequence Flow - Opionate's tool for letting respondents build their own ordered sequence, one placement at a time. For a fuller walkthrough, see our Introduction to Sequence Flow.
Getting Started¶
What's the difference between Sequence Flow and a regular Ranking question?¶
A plain Ranking question is a single drag-and-drop list, arranged in one continuous motion - a good fit for a short list. Sequence Flow builds toward the same kind of ordered result, but one placement at a time: a respondent taps a slot, picks an item from the pool, and moves on, free to work in whatever order they like. That matters once a list gets long enough, or an order matters enough, that dragging the whole thing into place in one motion stops being a reliable way to capture what someone actually thinks.
Is Sequence Flow only for literal task steps?¶
No. It's used for onboarding and workflow ordering, feature or benefit prioritization, information-architecture and navigation testing, and customer-journey step preference - anywhere the real question is about order, not just which single item wins.
Do I need design or research experience to run one?¶
No - Sequence Flow is built for anyone who needs to know what order a group of people would actually choose, not specifically for trained researchers. If you can list the items you're trying to order, you can build a Sequence Flow section.
Building a Section¶
How many items can I include?¶
Up to 20 items, each up to 300 characters.
Do respondents have to place every item?¶
Only if you set it up that way. You can require a full sequence, or cap it so respondents only need to place their top few - see our full building guide for how to choose between the two.
Can I add images to the items?¶
No - Sequence Flow items are plain text. If what you need feedback on is a visual, the Stimulus Section or Pairwise Comparison are the right section types for that.
Can I combine a Sequence Flow section with other section types in the same Advanced Survey?¶
Yes - Sequence Flow, Stimulus Sections, and Pairwise Comparison can all live inside the same Advanced Survey, in whatever order makes sense for what you're testing.
Can respondents change their mind while building the sequence?¶
Yes - any placed item can be moved to an adjacent position or cleared back to the pool at any point before the respondent finishes the section. Nothing is locked in until they finish.
Reading Results¶
Why doesn't Sequence Flow just show me an average rank per item?¶
Because averaging each item's position independently throws away the thing a sequencing question is actually asking for - the order itself, not just which item is individually strongest. See our full guide, Reading Sequence Flow Results, for a worked example of exactly how this goes wrong.
What are Route Flow and Route Network?¶
The two dedicated views Sequence Flow results are read through. Route Flow shows the single sequence that best represents the group, along with how strongly the group agreed on each step. Route Network shows the full map of orderings people actually built, with that consensus route highlighted inside it - useful when you want to know what else was happening beyond just the winning path.
Where do results show up?¶
In the same Report tab as any other survey question - no separate dashboard or export format to learn.
What's on the Roadmap¶
Does Opionate support card sorting?¶
Not yet. Card sorting is a related but distinct method - typically asking respondents to group items into categories rather than sequence them - and it isn't currently a section type on Opionate. If what you need is "what order do these go in," Sequence Flow is the right tool today; if what you need is "which bucket does this belong in," that's a different method we don't yet offer.