
S04E04 - Better survey design with AI - with Kirsten Hill
From Half Stack Data Science by Half Stack Data Science
June 22, 2025 · 55 min · Season 4 · Episode 4
About this episode
Kirsten Hill discusses the importance of effective survey design and her platform bisque that utilizes AI for better data collection.
In this episode, we spoke to Kirsten Hill. Dr Kirsten Hill is a researcher, writer, and the founder of bisque — a survey platform that actually cares if you get good data. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, has led research for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and has worked with over 100 mission-driven teams on measurement & evaluation. This past year, she authored her first book, Ask Better Questions, a top release on survey design — and realized that writing the book wasn’t enough. If she really wanted to change how people do research, she had to build the tools that would make it easier to do it right. With real-time AI feedback, intuitive design, and built-in best practices, bisque makes it easy to create surveys that get you the answers you actually need. We spoke to Kirsten about how and why surveys are often bad, why she believes the major survey platforms aren't fit for purpose, why she's building her own survey platform "bisque", how she's using Large Language Models to develop a working prototype, and what advice she has for other non-programmers who want to build things with AI. You can find her on: LinkedIn @kirstenleehill…
People in this episode
Guest: Kirsten Hill
Topics covered
- survey design
- AI
- research
- data collection
Keywords
- surveys
- Large Language Models
- measurement
- evaluation
Mentioned in this episode
Products: bisque
Books & works: Ph.D., Ask Better Questions, The Well-Grounded Data Analyst, the-well-grounded-data-analyst
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