On the process of user recruitment

When conducting user research (especially qualitative research), we often choose the methods of testing, interviewing and focus groups, and need to find the right users to observe, at which time, the user recruitment nature becomes an indispensable part of the work. Recruiting users is tedious, indeed, and it's about determining who to recruit, finding them, arranging time appointments and getting them there to help us accomplish our tasks. Recruiting users requires the ability to communicate with strangers and to coordinate externally, and you will be able to handle the challenges of recruiting and recruit representative user samples to participate in the research.

The recruiting process can be condensed into a few questions:

Where to find users?

In general, we recruit users have the following channels:

1. The company user database extracts the external real user

Collect user data by allowing users to fill out questionnaires online. In the recruitment, the first rough screening of eligible users, and then one by one screening, to find some more close to the needs of the target users.

Obviously, for companies that often need to recruit users, self-built user database is a relatively good choice, the first is that users from different channels, the number of more abundant, both representative, but also to reflect the authenticity and objectivity of samples.

2. Company internal users

Internal personnel refers to colleagues within the company, according to the requirements of the project, the following circumstances may be considered to recruit internal users:

When the usability test is tested for testing, an internal person can be invited;

Internal personnel and target users have the same characteristics, and not familiar with the product;

In some cases, insiders have more stringent requirements for products than outsiders, and will not hesitate to point out more questions and to keep new products confidential.

3. External Questionnaire Link

Some products are more difficult to directly recruit the actual target users, generally we will produce online questionnaires, the link to the questionnaire published in some websites or forums, collecting questionnaires data. This approach is a relatively easy way to find the actual target users we need, and users are willing to participate in our follow-up activities.

4. Introduction through Acquaintances

If the above channels are unable to find the right participants, and the time is more urgent circumstances, we will be familiar with people around to help introduce some eligible users, but these users can not understand the project moderator. This approach is basically not necessary, only the individual products in the recruitment difficulties, will consider this channel to assist us to complete the recruitment.

How to identify the right users?

The following procedures are for recruiting external users and internal users:

The process of recruiting external real users

We are initially screened from the database users, often more than the actual number of people, and not necessarily every user is appropriate, so the next thing to do is to call the user one by one to identify the actual situation.

The first telephone screening, we generally use the following process: