Dana Chisnell

Tag: recruiting

  • Talking to strangers in the street: Recruiting by intercepting people

      Intercepting is an exercise in self-awareness. Who you choose and how you approach them exposes who you are and what you think. What your fears are. The inner voice is loud. As a practice, we worry about bias in user research. Let me tell you, there’s nothing like doing intercepts for recruiting that exposes…

  • Gaining design insights from your research recruiting process

    I gave a virtual seminar for UIE in October 2013 about how to look at recruiting participants for studies as bonus user research. You can get the archived seminar from UIE. Or, have a look at the slides.

  • Four secrets of getting great participants who show up

    What if you had a near-perfect participant show rate for all your studies? The first time it happens, it’s surprising. The next few times, it’s refreshing — a relief. Teams that do great user research start with the recruiting process, and they come to expect near perfect attendance. Secret 1: Participants are people, not data…

  • The true costs of no-shows

    One of the first things people say when they call up looking for help with recruiting is that they want to recruit “12 for 8” or “20 for 15”. They know what they want to end up with. They’ve got to get data. Managers are showing up to observe. They’ve gone through a lot to…

  • Involving older adults in design of the user experience: Inclusive design

    Despite the reality of differences due to aging, research has also shown that in many cases, we do not need a separate design for people who are age 50+. We need better design for everyone. Everyone performs better on web sites where the interaction matches users’ goals; where navigation and information are grouped well; where…

  • Bonus research: Do the recruiting yourself

    There are some brilliant questions on Quora. This morning, I was prompted to answer one about recruiting. The question asker asked, How do I recruit prospective customers to shadow as a part of a user-centered design approach? The asker expanded, thusly: I’m interested in shadowing prospective customers in order to better understand how my tool…

  • You are not your user. No matter how good you think you are.

      Listen up, people. This is why — quantity is not quality — you are not your user.   The lesson for today on participant sampling is Google Buzz. Google has been working on Buzz for some time. And it’s a cool idea. Integrating the sharing of photos, status updates, conversations, and email is a thing…

  • Yes or No: Make your recruiter smarter

    In response to my last post about writing effective screeners, c_perfetti asks:   I agree open-ended questions in a screener are best. But one reason some usability professionals use ‘yes/no’ questions is because they don’t have confidence that the external recruiters can effectively assess what an acceptable open ended answer would be. In some cases,…

  • Why your screener isn’t working

    I get that not every researcher wants to or has time to do her own recruiting of participants. Recruiting always seems like an ideal thing to outsource to someone else. As the researcher, you want to spend your time designing, doing, and analyzing research. So, you find an agency to do the recruiting. Some are…

  • Recruiting 101: Treat your test participants like humans

    One of the most often asked questions I get at talks and workshops is What about recruiting – how do I do a better job of that part of a usability test? One way is to ensure that you’re remembering that the people you recruit are humans. I wrote about this topic for Boxes &…