Part 4: User research respondents recruitment - What are the final steps around user research?

Part 4 immediately before, during and immediately after the examination

1. A reminder

Send another e-mail, and/or SMS, as a reminder a day or two days beforehand. This reduces the chances of respondents not showing up, because they forgot, for instance, or forgot to cancel due to circumstances. This makes it easier for you to switch on at such short notice.

Also consider a back-up plan in case a respondent cancels last-minute or does not show up (after all). For example, keep in mind a colleague with little substantive involvement, such as one from the customer service, finance or warehouse departments. Or, if you are in a collective building of companies, a neighbour. Often, you will find that the observations will differ little or not at all from the other respondents, provided your 'back-up respondent' does not deviate too much from the recruited group of respondents.

View here an example of a reminder message.

2. Final daily schedule

Before the day of the examination, make a final daily schedule so that all stakeholders know where they stand. On this daily schedule, you can include:

• Which respondent will arrive at what time

• The respondent's demographic data

• How long the scheduled sessions will last at most

• When break times are scheduled

3. After user research

If the incentive cannot be handed over by the research supervisor immediately after the research session, for example because someone else is responsible for it, make sure that its handling is also as streamlined as possible after the research session.

This also applies to the handling of the travel reimbursement. For example, make sure you know what data the finance department needs from the respondent in order to process the incentive and/or travel expenses properly in the accounts. Also make sure that the respondent has to do as little as possible for this. Think of a ready-made form that you let the respondent fill in afterwards, under the guidance of, for instance, the office manager or another colleague. The perception of the product and/or service you are working on is just as important as the perception of the respondent you are helping.

Should the settlement of the incentive and/or travel expenses be handled after the user survey, provide the respondent with complete information so that expectations are clear. For example, send an e-mail after with details such as:

• The incentive owed

• The travel allowance owed

• To which address the allowance will be sent and/or to which bank account number the allowance will be transferred

• Within which timeframe these actions will be carried out

• Contact details for questions or if the allowance(s) are not delivered within the agreed timeframe

In this fourth and final article in the series 'recruiting respondents for a qualitative user survey', you were able to read how to provide respondents with a reminder, what a final day plan is good for and how to properly complete the survey.

Want to review all the steps for recruiting respondents for a qualitative user survey? View or download here is the whitepaper from Concept7.