Day 50 - Usability Testing - Vendors vs. DIY

When recruiting interviewees for usability and research tests you can either partner with a vendor or do it yourself depending on the budget and scope of your project.

USING A VENDOR:

• Can save you time
• Be expensive
• Give you less control
• Leverage usability testing skills they may be better at
• Access to user and client relationships you don't have
• Provide blind testing

THE DO IT YOURSELF (DIY) APPROACH:

• More of your time
• Cheap
• More control
• You own the relationships
• Can be blind
• Learn about your users by doing your own recruiting

Day 48 - Usability Testing - Getting Participants for Your Research

How would you go about finding people to interview for your research and usability testing of your prototype?

1. Have a tight deadline.  Lock the calendar date of when your user interviews will take place.
2. Create a screener questionnaire by defining your criteria, writing the questions and creating a Google Form. Also see Google Venture's worksheet for writing a screener.
3. Create a Craigslist Ad with a link to your form.
4. Offer payment or reward for participants.
5. Choose your interviewees carefully. Your ad and questionnaire should be used to vigorously filter out and disqualify candidates that don't meet your target user criteria.
6. Get NDA signed - Get their permission/signature to record the interviews. Also, "The ideas that come out of this, I own that".