Recruit
Go find 12-20 participants who can help uncover the needs and goals of your users through interviews, diary studies, etc.
Who's involved:
- UX Designer, Product Manger
Timeline:
- 2-3 weeks prior to testing is preferable
Output:
- Booked testing sessions with participants
Step-by-step
After you have identified the users you want to recruit based on the Plan and Gather stages, you can begin recruiting for your tests! We use MailChimp in order to recruit our users, but there are plenty of other options to satisfy your email marketing needs. Here's how we do things:
1) Find potential test participants
- Request a list of users that match your criteria for research.
2) Upload your list of users into MailChimp.
- How to guide for: Import Subscribers to a List in MailChimp
3) Create an Email Template
- Create a template for the email you wish to send to your users. At this stage, we link potential participants to our booking software, YouCanBook.Me.
- How to guide for: Creating Templates in MailChimp
4) Send out a Campaign
- Campaigns are how you email your user group with that fancy new template you’ve created. You can choose to send it to your whole list in one fell swoop, or you can send it in stages to different segments!
- How to guide for: Creating Campaigns in MailChimp
5) Wait for the bookings to roll in!
- You should receive an email notification when sessions have been booked.
6) View bookings in Calendar
- Calendar invites are the best way to organize your sessions, and will allow you to share sessions with others easily (if desired).
7) Contact participants to confirm bookings
- Contact participants the week of their sessions to confirm their attendance (this is done automatically by YouCanBook.Me. If you are conducting remote testing, make sure you send the participants invites/links to any software they may need).
8) Non-disclosure agreement
- Send all participants a non-disclosure agreement (we use RightSignature for this).
Note: If you are unable to recruit participants (due to time / stealth):
You can recruit internal co-workers for research, as long as they meet the following criteria:
- They have not been involved in the ideation stages or feature you are testing.
- They would be considered a potential "target user" of your product or feature.
Co-workers should never be used outside of generative research, and should only be used as an absolute last resort.
Tips:
- There are a lot of templates set up already in MailChimp - feel free to modify something that already exists for your recruitment!
- Make sure you include the incentive you're offering on the email template - a $50 Amazon/MasterCard gift card for an hour session is usually well received.
- When conducting research in-house, try to call participants the day before to remind them! It decreases no-shows!
Avoid:
- Don't test with just anyone. Research should be conducted with representative users.
- Make sure you include the incentive you're offering on the email template - a $50 Amazon/MasterCard gift card for an hour session is usually well received.
- When conducting research in-house, try to call participants the day before to remind them! It decreases no-shows!