As Lori discussed in the post Recruiting Agency + User Testing = Nirvana, Evantage typically uses a recruiting agency to recruit participants for user studies. Recruiting agencies can be invaluable when identifying and scheduling participants for studies, but I have learned that is important to work closely with them to ensure the participants who are recruited are the ones that everyone intended they be. Likewise, it is important to find a firm that you have confidence in and that has the ability to find the participants you need. Based on my experience of working with recruiting agencies, I have put together a list of tips that you may find useful when working with agencies.
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Posts Tagged ‘Recruiting’
How to Work with an Agency to Recruit Participants for User Studies
Tuesday, December 14th, 2010Recruiting Agency + User Testing = Nirvana
Thursday, June 11th, 2009We do a lot of user testing here at Evantage. A typical project can have a few rounds of testing. It’s that love of creative solutions for complex problems that leads us to find out if users totally get it or if they are struggling to complete a task we had all high-fived over when the prototype was initially designed. Lots of user testing ensures that we are certain that users will spend time on the site/application/device and find everything they need.
Performing all this testing requires users. Depending on the number of personas or profiles I create for a client this could be anywhere from 7-20 people for each round of testing. This doesn’t seem like much and clients often think that they can save the recruiting costs if they do it internally, but I find that hiring a recruiting agency to find users is more efficient and even cost effective in the long run.
