Recruit Participants

• Who should participate in a usability test?
• Who should recruit participants?
• What should you ask in a screening questionnaire?
• Does recruiting cost money?

Who should participate in a usability test?

In a usability test, the participants must be like the people who will use your site. The point of usability testing is to find out what is most likely to happen when your site gets out there to be used.

If the participants in your usability test are not like the people who will use your site, you will not find out what you need to know. It is quite easy to get false results. The most common is the false positive you are likely to get if you have internal staff testing a site meant for an external audience. (That is, the site works well for these participants in the usability test but fails with the real users after it is launched.)

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Who should recruit participants?

Getting the right people to take part in a usability test takes time and effort.

If the team (management, development, usability) has access to representative users, that's a fine way to recruit. Just be sure the people you get that way really represent the people you are concerned about being successful at the site. And use a screening questionnaire so everyone who is recruiting is asking the same questions of potential participants.

If the team does not have access to representative users, you may want to have a commercial recruiting company find the participants for you. Most recruiting companies require two to three weeks to find the necessary number and types of participants. And you may be asked to provide the recruiters with a screening questionnaire.

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What should you ask in a screening questionnaire?

For templates you can use, see Usability Test Screeners. The questions are examples, taken from government Web site screeners, that might be included in your screening questionnaire; you may want other questions or a different mix of participants for a usability test of your site.

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Does recruiting cost money?

Usually when having others recruit for you, plan on a cost associated with finding the people, another cost for each participant's time (incentive), and in some cases for travel/parking expenses.

If you do not use a commercial recruiting firm, you may still need to plan on incentives to get participants to come. This may be money and/or travel expenses. It may be a non-monetary gift.

The right incentive is what will entice the people whom you want to participate to say "Yes, I will come try out the Web site."

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Next steps

Now that you have recruited the right participants, you should also Create Final Scenarios. If you have both participants and scenarios, you are ready to Set Up for the Test Sessions.

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