can be reached on AOL Instant Messager at “aimscreenname.” To keep from swamping me with requests from multiple people at once, please designate one person who will direct any questions and comments to me as the sessions are ongoing. Feel free to point out any and all issues you think are important. I may not be able to handle all your requests, but I’ll try my best!
—If you have any other questions about how to follow along with the sessions or communicate with me during the sessions, feel free to email me.
That’s all! Looking forward to getting this study started!
Note
Researchers and Stakeholders
In this book we occasionally mention “researchers” and “stakeholders” because often-times the people conducting the research (“researchers”) are doing it on behalf of other people who have commissioned the research (“stakeholders”). Stakeholders—who can include business executives, managers who dictate the research budget, and so on—are usually untrained in research methods (never mind remote research methods), but they’re essential for defining the parameters of the study and should be involved in all steps of the testing. Of course, there are also situations in which the researchers are the stakeholders—e.g., academic research or companies in which the developers also do their own user testing. So, just to be clear: there aren’t always business stakeholders, and in those cases you can ignore the whole researcher/stakeholder dichotomy and the issues of “sign-off and approval” we occasionally bring up.
Chapter Summary
There’s always the chance you may have to go back and adjust something in the project goals or adjust the schedule for whatever reason; however, you can consider yourself pretty much finished with the setup phase and ready to move on to recruiting once you’ve completed the following:
Selected, installed, and familiarized yourself with a screen sharing tool (and recording tool, if necessary).
Set up your equipment: computer, high-speed wired Internet connection, monitor(s), two-line desk phone, phone headset, and any other necessary equipment.
Arranged backup screen sharing tools, as well as any optional tools (recording, note taking, etc.).
Completed standard user research project management steps (check out Chapter 5 of Mike Kuniavsky’s Observing the User Experience).
Completed the recruiting screener design and recruiting test (covered in the next chapter).
Drafted and familiarized yourself with the facilitator guide.
Briefed observers on how to participate during testing days.
Conducted a practice run of the test, to make sure everything’s working (especially if it’s your first time).
Got all that? Then you’re ready to start testing!
[1] Chapter 5 covers the finer points of moderating in detail; for more details on traditional moderating techniques, see Joseph Dumas and Beth Loring’s Moderating Usability Tests: Principles and Practices for Interacting.
Chapter 3
Recruiting for Remote Studies
Live Recruiting Using Forms and Pop-ups
Choosing Good Users and Spotting the Fakers
Recruiting Slow? Don’t Sit Around—Fix the Screener
Recruiting research participants is notoriously frustrating and easy to mess up. If you do mess it up, you risk blowing the validity of the study, and even if you don’t mess it up, it can still be a big drain on time and money. Many researchers are glad to hand over recruiting to a professional third-party recruiting agency, paying anywhere from $100 to $800 per recruit (depending on the stringency of the recruiting criteria). Others rely on in-house email lists, academic volunteer pools, paid participant panels, or personal contacts, each of which may not provide a representative or unbiased sample, for a number of reasons. And worst of all are online classified ads like those on craigslist, where the recruits are usually biased or, at best, solely interested (as opposed to mostly interested) in collecting an incentive check.
But then there’s the rest of the Web: a huge pool of anonymous, disinterested, ordinary people who wouldn’t necessarily consider participating in a research study, much less join a panel of standby participants—in other words, very promising research participants. This section will teach you how to recruit those people, confirm that they’re qualified, contact them, and convince them to take 40 minutes out of their day to participate in a research study, all in a reliable, ethical, and nonirritating way.
Note that you can use these methods to recruit for any kind of study, whether moderated or automated, in-person or remote, live or scheduled. And we’ll also explain why doing it this way is worthwhile.
What’s “Live Recruiting”?
Live recruiting is using your Web site to collect voluntarily submitted user info and then using that info to contact qualified users within seconds. Why would you want to do that? First, it eliminates the need to schedule users in advance. Since you’re using remote methods, you can begin a study at the very moment the recruit agrees to participate. And by intercepting visitors to your Web site using a form or pop-up window, you can instantly screen and call them within minutes of their submitting the form—that’s what makes it“live.”
Predictably, live recruiting has its advantages and limitations. The biggest advantage, which is an advantage of remote research in general, is that it enables time-aware research.
Note
Live Recruiting Is the Key to Time-Aware Research
Remember that “time-aware research” concept we keep bringing up? Live recruiting is the easiest way to make it happen. By recruiting participants just as they’re about to perform a task you’re interested in watching, you can contact them and begin a remote research session right away. We can’t overemphasize how much of a difference this makes.
Let’s say you want to study people who are browsing for laptops on your Web site. If you’re live recruiting, you can wait until you hear from people who say, “I’m browsing for laptops,” and then call them right away, so you can actually watch them browse for laptops on their own initiative. You don’t have to tell them to pretend that they’re browsing for a laptop. Users with real motivations for their tasks
