Guerrilla user recruitment
Fresh off the press, my latest article is on the topic of recruiting users for user centred design.
Recruiting participants for website research can be difficult, but a few simple steps can help make the process go much more smoothly, without the need for expensive agency fees.
Ok, maybe less guerrilla and more ‘on the cheap’ :)
I’ve based this on my experiences in helping in-house teams through the process of doing user research. All the techniques and methodologies in the world can’t help you if you don’t have people to research and test with.
And for reader’s of my blog, you get an exclusive tip not included in the article: make sure you give yourself plenty of time. Time and time again I come across the situation where people are trying to recruit users (or for that matter doing surveys, designing IA etc) in a ridiculously tight time-frame…such as one week.
An old rule of thumb I used to use as a web development team leader, was to take the time estimates my developers would come up with then “double it and add half” (ie multiply the time by 3). It seems like it’s a similar situation for user recruitment.
Of course, there is no precise formula, but the point is to make sure you have plenty of time up your sleeve or the quality of your results will suffer, and your stress will increase!
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