Recruiting for User Research: A Toolkit

Let’s be honest. Sometimes the biggest barrier to conducting user research or usability testing is finding real users to talk to.

Finding users takes time, and drafting emails to talk to each user individually is tedious and hard to track. Worse, sometimes your product is niche, or your organization doesn’t make it easy to access customers.

But even talking with one or two users can make a big difference in how well your product connects with its audience. So we wanted to make tools that would streamline the process of brainstorming where to find users, actually contacting users, and tracking your wins.

With this kit that I created while at Sparkbox, I’ll give you actionable, easy-to-use ideas for where to find user research participants and how to advocate for the importance of UX research and usability testing. This kit includes:

• a choose-your-own-adventure-style decision tree that guides you to participants for research or testing (download the full poster and hang it on your wall!)

• best practice email templates to invite users to participate in your research opportunity

• a spreadsheet to organize your research prospects and contacts