The most time-consuming part of doing research is recruiting participants–or maybe that’s just what we tell ourselves when we decide to skip it. If you have a simple, repeatable system in place, recruiting takes much less time than you’d think.
This is part 1 in a series on UX Research for Nonprofits. For the next step, read Part 2 – Conducting user interviews.
Finding research participants
Research participants are ideally people who actually use your website. They may or may not be donors or supporters, so I’ll refer to them from here on out as either your “users” or “research participants.”
There are two primary ways to find users who might be willing to talk to you about your website. The first way is to survey those users while they are on your website or using your digital platform. This is an especially good method because you can also use it as an opportunity to ask users to rate their experience, which will provide your organization with metrics to track the usability of your website, in addition to generating a list of potential research participants.
This added benefit also helps justify the friction introduced by a survey, because you’ll get not just research participants, but digital usability metrics your organization can track over time.
Method #1 – survey users on your website
To do this, you’ll need a tool that creates surveys and can integrate them into your website or platform. For a website, tools like SurveyMonkey and Google Forms would work fine. For a website that users log into with an account, using a survey tool that is integrated with your website is a better solution. That’s because it allows you to set conditions on who to survey and when, so you’re minimizing the disruption a survey can cause for your users and ensuring you recruit the most relevant participants for your interviews.
Method #2 – send users an email survey
This method works the same way as Method #1, but instead of targeting users on your website, you’ll send the survey to users by email. To do this, you’ll need a list of users or supporters – names, email addresses, and ideally, enough information to help you identify whether they use your website or not. Once you have a segmented list of supporters, email them the survey.
Create the survey
To find willing research participants you have to start by asking your users or supporters if they are willing to participate in research. You don’t have to call it “research” if that sounds too formal or academic. Just ask them if it’s ok to follow-up with them via email.
Kill two birds by asking questions that will help you track usability and satisfaction (or whichever metrics you care about) and then ask if it’s ok to follow-up with them after the survey. SUPR-Q, SUS, and NPS are all examples of standardized survey questions you could choose to ask in your survey, again depending on what you’re trying to learn.
Then, download your survey results and filter by the people who said it was ok to contact them. Now you have your list of research participants!
To recap:
- Survey your users or customers ideally on your website or, if that’s not an option, via email.
- Ask standard questions that will help you track usability and satisfaction (or whichever metrics you care about)
- Also ask if it’s ok to follow-up with them after the survey (this is how you’ll build your participant list!)
- Download your survey results and filter by the people who said it was ok to contact them. You can also filter by any other attributes to segment your list to contact users who are most relevant to your research.
Screening participants
At this point, you’ve surveyed your users, so you’ll be able to grab a list of the people who answered “Yes” to your question about participating in research, along with their contact information. You’ll most likely get this list by downloading your survey results as a CSV or Excel file and then filtering the responses by the research participation question. This will vary based on the survey tool you’re using.
Now, you’ve got a list of people who are willing to talk to you. To make sure they can answer the questions you’re most interested in learning about, you will need to screen them. Otherwise, you risk wasting your own time and theirs if it turns out they only engage with your organization face-to-face and you want to know about online donation pain points.
To do that, you’ll need to create a screener survey to send to those users who agreed to participate in research. A screen survey helps you identify participants that are most relevant to your study.
Some typical screener questions are:
- Demographics (age, location, income range) – helps you segment if necessary and to create a more representative sample of the target users for your study.
- Website usage – how long they have been using your website and what do they use it for? This is helpful for segmenting new from experienced users.
- Feature usage – what areas of your website do they use most and/or least often? This is especially helpful for building a list of participants for ongoing studies on specific features / tasks.
- What other apps or tools do they use other than yours? This can help you if you’re trying to understand how your website compares to others.
Email the screener survey to your participant list
Send the screener survey in an email to the people on your participant list. In your message, let them know what they’re signing up for – how long the interview will be, if it’s virtual (recommended) or in person, and what technology they’ll need to have access to (computer with web cam & microphone, Zoom, etc.). You should also indicate whether an incentive will be offered to the participant after the interview. Whenever possible, you should compensate your research participants for their time. A good rule of thumb is $50 for a 1 hour interview.
Scheduling user interviews
To make this part easier, I recommend using a scheduling tool. This will allow you to set up your availability and participants to book times that work best for them, a win-win. These tools also generate a video conferencing link and calendar invite, automating some of the more tedious parts of scheduling for you.
Here’s how to set up scheduling that is both efficient and effective:
- Select your participants based on their responses to the screener survey
- Get your favorite calendar tool updated with your preferences and send participants a link to book an interview.
- I like Calendly for scheduling, it’s flexible and I’ve never had a participant have trouble using it (unlike Google’s appointment slots). It also syncs with multiple calendars, which is handy if you want to include colleagues in the interviews. Calendly will find time you and/or your whole team are free.
- Mention anything participants need to know on the scheduling page. For example, “This will be a 45 minute video call and you’ll need to be someplace quiet with a good internet connection, preferably at a computer, since we’ll ask you to access your account and share your screen.”
- Get approval to record and use the interview for research purposes.
- Before your interview, email the participant an authorization form to sign and return before the interview.
- I like to do this 24 hours before the interview, since it also serves as another touchpoint / reminder to reduce the odds of them not showing up for the interview. Although, again, you can’t prevent all no-shows!
- Reminders – send a reminder email, again to reduce no-shows.
Conducting user interviews
I have a separate post on the topic of conducting user interviews, but here’s the quick version:
- Identify the moderator, the person who will conduct the interview.
- Identify a note-taker, someone on your team who will attend the interview and take notes in real time. This is a great way to get other people in the organization involved, too – note-takers can be anyone in your organization who is interested and willing to show up.
- Prepare an interview script that covers the introduction, the questions you want to ask and follow-ups based on their answers, and concludes the interview by thanking them and confirming where to send the incentive.
- Practice the interview with a colleague or friend ahead of your first interview session to work out the kinks in your technology, interview script, and delivery.
- Start and end interviews on time, and remember to thank your participants.
A note about no-shows
Just know that you will always have no-shows, no matter what you do. Decide how long you’ll wait on a call for a participant to show up – maybe 5 or 10 minutes – and then move on.
When this has happened to me in the past, I’ve sent a polite message saying “Oops, looks like we missed each other today” to acknowledge it. Resist the urge to give them a chance to reschedule – once a no-show, always a no-show, in my experience. Instead, flag them in your participant database so you know not to contact them again, and move on to the next participant on your list.
Of course, if it’s an important member or supporter, then you might choose to include a rescheduling link with your “Sorry we missed each other” message.
You’ll come to appreciate participants who contact you in advance (to cancel or reschedule, even if it’s the day of the interview. In those cases, I’ll send them a “No problem, thanks for letting me know” message and include the rescheduling link.
Closing the loop after the interview
After the interview, send each participant a thank you email along with the incentive to compensate them for their time and insights.
I like to let them know the impact their participation will have on the product – for example, “Thanks again for taking the time to talk with us today. Your insights are really valuable to our team and will help inform the redesign of X or the roadmap for Y.”
Tools:
- An in-product tool like Intercom or Sprig for surveying users in your product. If you don’t have a tool like this, then a spreadsheet and survey tool will do.
- A survey tool like Google Forms, Survey Monkey, or Qualtrics for creating the screener survey to send to users who agree to be contacted for research.
- A calendar scheduling tool like Calendly or Google Appointment Slots for booking interviews.
- A video conferencing tool like Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet for conducting and recording the user interviews. Ideally, one that will generate a transcription for you, too.
- A whiteboard tool like Miro, Mural, FigJam for user research synthesis.
This is part 1 in a series on UX Research for Nonprofits. For the next step, read Part 2 – Conducting user interviews.