User recruitment process in the end is how?

When conducting user research (especially qualitative research), we often select methods such as testing, interviews and focus groups and need to find the right users for observation. User recruitment is an integral part of the job. Recruiting users are tedious, and indeed, it is a matter of determining who to recruit, finding them, arranging time to meet and having them present to assist us in our mission. Recruiting users need to be good at communication with strangers and coordination skills, you can handle the difficulties encountered in the recruitment process, to recruit representative sample of users to participate in the study.

The recruitment process can be condensed into several problems:

Where to find users?

In general, we recruit users have the following channels:

1. Company user database to extract external real users

Collect user data by having users fill out the questionnaire online. At the time of recruitment, firstly, the users who are eligible are screened out roughly and then screened one by one to find out the target users who are closer to the demand.

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

2. Internal users

Internal staff refers to colleagues within the company, according to project needs, the following circumstances may consider recruiting internal users:

In the usability test pre-test, you can invite internal staff;

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

In some cases, insiders have stricter requirements on products than outsiders and will not hesitate to point out more questions and confidentiality of new products.

3 plug-in questionnaire link

Some products more difficult to recruit directly to the actual target users, in general, we will make an online questionnaire, the questionnaire link targeted published in some sites or forums, collecting questionnaire data. This method is easier to find out from the actual target users we need, and users are happy to participate in our follow-up activities.

4. Introduced by acquaintances

If the above channels are not able to find the right participants, and the time is relatively urgent, we will let those who are familiar with help to introduce some eligible users, but these users can not meet with the project host. This approach is basically not only the recruitment of individual products there is difficulty, we will consider this channel to help us to complete the recruitment.

How to identify the right user?

The following describes the process of recruiting external users and internal users:

Recruit external real user process

The number of users we initially screen out of our database is often more than what we actually need, and not every user is right, so the next thing to do is call the user one by one to find out what's going on.

In this process, you may encounter the following problems:

User wondering how would you know his phone number?

Users do not always remember that they left their contact information, then we need to explain to the user clearly, so to speak: "You recently filled out a questionnaire on our website, asking for your wishes in the questionnaire, if you are willing to accept In our later phone interview, please leave a phone number for us to contact you when needed. " This is the actual situation, the user is willing to leave a contact phone, will naturally eliminate the hearts of doubt.

Is this annoying investigation / phone interview?

Some users have formed a sense of inertia for the words "research". So we do not have to change the way we are, and we can start chatting with users in the way of chat: "In order to optimize the design of our XXX products, we would like to understand what we usually do and what problems we encounter during use so that we can improve our products ". Most users will be happy to accept our questions and may even say a lot of questions that we did not expect in advance. Good communication users, but also to tell stories about their own experience of the situation.

Are you an xx company? How can I believe you?

Phone screening because they can not visit the company site, the two sides only the exchange of voices, often make users feel suspicious. Generally, we will explain to users from the following points, such as "How do we get the user's contact information?" "What is the purpose of our telephone screening?" "Our telephone screening process does not require users to disclose important and private information, And later we have to invite you to participate in research activities, you can go to our company to witness the scene. " When communicating with a user, the term must be courteous, the attitude remains firm, the rate of speech is modest, and the tone of speech is friendly.

I am not empty, how long do you want to delay?

Calling the user may disturb the life and work of the user. When the user indicates inconvenience, he / she should be respected, the interview should be suspended, the user should be asked for convenient time, and the phone must be interviewed again at the appointed time. Questions to the user should be as concise, the problem should be focused, as long as we understand the information we need to gather can be over.

Demographic users do not want to disclose, how is it?

Some users are particularly sensitive to personal information and do not want to disclose the exact information. You can ask, in a different way, "Can you reveal your income range / age range?" At least you know if you can not get the most accurate information The general situation. If the user does not want to disclose, we should respect the user, no longer questioning.

User attitude is not correct, take the opportunity to take 讪?

When a user asks for personal information about a worker, the worker can explicitly deny it on the grounds that they exceed their personal job responsibilities.

After the first call screening, the existing user data should be checked to confirm that each person did not participate in similar user research activities. For those who have participated in such activities, may simply be exaggerated for the sake of remuneration, should pay more attention.

Throughout the recruitment process, in order to avoid the "special worm" that specializes in such activities and improve the quality of recruitment, care needs to be taken to update the user database in time:

- Prior to telephone screening, users who previously extracted research data from userpool (user database) were excluded

- After the project execution phase ends, be sure to mark the user information of the participating research activity in the userpool

- At this point, we also need to select a more suitable candidate, as well as screening work to be conducted, that is, the second telephone screening; the second screening is relatively simple:

- Re-verify again whether they have the required conditions (re-confirm verbally with the user verbally).

- Check if they have time on the day of the event.

- Inform the duration of the activity, the general content of the activity, and other precautions (such as recording and recording during the period).

- Tell them what kind of compensation they can give.

- Determine if they are good participants (can you be voice-conscious and articulate?).

After the second call screening, send an invitation email to inform users of the event time, place, activities. The message should contain the following information:

- Driving directions to the test site (by car and bus route)

- parking place

- Test the specific location of the room

- In the event of an incident, the telephone number of the staff member who arranges the test can be contacted promptly

- Confidentiality agreements (if any) so that they can be read before testing

At this point, the recruitment work is nearing completion, then call again to confirm that the user has received the invitation letter and reiterate the note (note refers to inform the user time and place, etc.).

Finally, the user arrived at the scene, receiving the user. In general, a user should be called to verify that they are able to attend the event and answer any questions the user poses before the user arrives at the site.

Recruit internal user processes

Recruitment of internal users more time and effort, the process is relatively simple, the user screening process and the process of recruiting external real users are roughly the same, determine the right candidate, agreed to facilitate the time to participate in activities.

How to compensate for the user's time?

After the second screening, it is determined that the solicitation user should come and should inform the user in the invitation email that we will give some remuneration as compensation. Invite external users to participate in the event, the remuneration given will depend on the content of the event and the length of time it takes. At the end of the activity, the corresponding compensation should be given to the user personally and to express my heart-felt thanks to the user.