recruiting the right participants 10Nov05

At ok-cancel.com Jared Spool published an article about recruiting the right participants.

"When putting together a design study, whether it is usability testing, field research, or focus group activity, it turns out that the most critical activity is recruiting the right participants.

Over the past few years, we’ve interviewed several dozen user experience professionals, looking at the practices they use to conduct their research. As we dissected every activity involved in producing a successful study, we came to the conclusion that recruiting participants is the lynchpin that holds the study together.

(...)

As we conducted our interviews, we compared the teams that were getting the best results from their studies to those teams that regularly struggled. What we found was fascinating.

The most successful teams all:

• Made building their lists of potential candidates a year-round activity, not just when they were preparing for a study


• Screened and recruited their own participants, instead of using an outside agency


• Saw the recruiting process as a technique to collect data about who is (and who isn’t) in their target audience and what defines each segment


• Used open-discussion interviewing as a screening method, instead of a flow-chart-based screener


• Had the recruiter meet frequently with the team to discuss what the recruiter was learning about the audience and how to better leverage the recruitment process
"

Internetverweis

Putting Perfect Participants in Every Session