Preparing your User Study and Recruiting Participants

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Overview

Questions

• How do I determine who my target audience is for a user study?
• What are the risks I should consider before conducting a user study and how do I proactively mitigate them?
• How do I ensure that I connect with and recruit participants from the chosen target audience?
• What materials do I need to prepare before conducting an interview?

Objectives

• Define a target audience for the user study
• Identify risks of participation in a study and ways of addressing those
• Recruit users based on chosen target audience
• Create an outreach plan and craft relevant materials (including screener, emails, etc)
• Develop and refine an interview protocol

Instructor Note

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Challenge 1

Read the following scenario and describe which outreach methods the researcher should prepare to reach their target audience.

Rae would like to better understand the needs of field scientists who are monitoring algae blooms and sharing data through a web application. The scientists are scattered across different time zones and are more communicative over phone or video call. Rae is interested in recruiting current users and potential users for the study, but does not know everyone personally. They have access to their lab’s mailing list and know a few independent researchers with contacts.

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Challenge 2

Read the following statements and determine if they are true or false.

Statement	True/False?
During the interviews you plan to record audio but not video, so you do not need to prepare a media consent form.
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Key Points

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• You should prepare an interview protocal with your target audience in mind. The interview protocal will outline information such as your research goals, interview questions, and…