For some time now Google is running Google Forms service which allows anyone to create web forms using extremely simple creator. Just log in to your google account, go to documents to try yourself:

Then follow on-screen instruction, there’s nothing that can cause any trouble to anyone. When you save the form, you will get email with two URLs – one to the form itself, second one to Google Spreadsheet which to which all data typed to your form will be saved. Clean and easy!

I’ve used Google Forms to gather  feedback from my recent presentations and I’m more than happy with results. I’ve created anonymous forms with no required fields not to put any pressure on responders. The turn-over was higher than expected, I got both positive and negative responses. Some people used “other comment” field to provide their email.

My tips for using Google forms for feedback gathering:

• use open questions
• ask for positive and negative sides separately “what did you like… / what didn’t you like…”
• if you had several separable parts of presentation, ask for each part separately to make the answers more straight forward
• do not make fields required – you will see that most people will fill all fields without you pushing them!
• make the survey anonymous
• add “other comments” field

Good luck! :)