Hey, there.

At this point, you should have a

firm understanding of what it means to
empathize with users. To really understand how
users think and feel, you need to talk
to them directly. One way you can learn
from real people about their needs is by
conducting interviews. But how can you find and
recruit people to interview? In the next few videos, we'll go over what you need to
do to recruit participants, prepare for interviews, and conduct interviews.
Are you ready? Let's get started with how to
recruit participants first. As you can probably imagine, recruiting participants
who are available to be interviewed takes
time and planning. When you're on the job
in the real world, you might start with a
screener survey to help identify the best candidates to interview for
your research study. A screener survey or simply
screener, for short, is a detailed list of questions
that helps researchers determine if potential
participants meet the requirements
of the research study. For the purposes of this course, you aren't required
to create a screener, but it is a good tool to be
familiar with for the future. Whether you use a
screener survey or just move straight
to recruiting, you should start with
one important step: determine the interview goals. To determine the goals
of the interview, ask yourself questions
like the following: What do you want to learn
from the interviews? Are there certain
user problems or pain points that you
need to empathize with? Are there any characteristics of users you want to
interview? Why? How much information
should we have to ensure we get a comprehensive and balanced set of data? Write a
clear list of goals to explain why you are conducting interviews, which will help
determine the characteristics of participants who will be
ideal for you to meet with. For example, imagine
you're designing a weather app for the
project in this course. The goal of your
interviews during the empathize phase could be to understand emotions that people
experience related to
unpredictable weather. Or imagine you're
designing a shopping app. During interviews, you
may want to identify common user behaviors and experiences involved
in shopping online, like adding and removing
items from a cart. As you start recruiting, aim to form a
representative sample. A representative sample is a subset of the
target population that seeks to accurately reflect the characteristics
of the larger group. The participants in a representative
sample should include user groups that
have been commonly under-represented in
previous research. This lack of
representation is often the result of biases due to age, race, gender, or ability.
Having a diverse pool of
participants to choose from will help you create great
experiences for all users. Once you've determined the
goals of your interviews, it's time to continue
the recruitment process. To do this, we'll explore how to search for potential
interview participants. In the real-world, there are lots of factors that determine
how and where UXers find potential
interview participants. For example, finding people to interview can depend on
the company you work for, the type of product
you're designing, time constraints
for the projects, the projects' budgets, and the accessibility of the
people you want to interview. For the purpose of this course, you may be limited on
who you can find to be part
of your study, so all of the methods we're
going to discuss may not be an option for you at the
moment. That's okay. To begin your search, start by creating a list of
who you know personally. You can also ask people from your professional circles,
such as your current or
former colleagues, managers, or even
peers in this course. Once you've compiled a
list of people you know, move on to people
you don't know. Perhaps the easiest
way to recruit interview participants
outside of your immediate network, is through social networks
or online platforms. We already mentioned
finding people to interview through your
social media profiles. You can also connect with potential interviewees via
professional networking
sites like LinkedIn. Online groups based on personal interests are
another great resource. For example, if you're
designing an app for musicians, you might find an online group about creating music
through a Google search or on social media sites like
Facebook or Reddit. So you have quite a
few ideas for how to find people to interview for
your project in this course. I also want to share a couple
of ways that you might find interview participants in
the real world on the job. Keep in mind though that
these two methods are not expected for the
purposes of this course. One method you might use is a third-party research
recruiting agency. This means that the agency you hire finds people for
you to interview. Recruiting agencies are useful because they save you
time and can often reach a greater
diversity of users than you might be capable
of reaching on your own. However, please note,
for this course, you are not expected to hire a third-party
recruiting agency. Hiring a recruiting agency costs money, so you will likely only
use this method if
you're working on a project that has a
budget for this service. You and your team
may also choose to connect with research
participants through paid services like usertesting.com
or userinterviews.com. Hopefully, you now have
a decently-sized list of people you can ask to
participate in your interviews. You may decide to reach out to these participants
based
on who's available. Or if you are sending
a screener survey, you might select
the candidates who align best with your
interview goals. Either way, it's likely
that a few candidates will stand out quickly
as ideal candidates. When you are ready, reach out to each perspective participant.
The most common way to
do this is via email. Let's explore what
you should include. Start with a greeting
that introduces yourself and the project, then briefly explain why you
are reaching out to them. Include logistics for the
interview, like location, date, and time. Next, explain the setup
for the interview. This is a good time to explain any parts of
the interview that you'll need their consent for, like recording audio or video.
Begin wrapping up your email
by letting the participant know how they should confirm their interview time if
they are interested. This can either be through
a link to schedule their interview or
through an email reply. If you have the budget, add an incentive
like a gift card. This always helps
sweeten the deal and makes participants
excited to interview. Finally, close the email with
a salutation and your name. After you confirm
people to interview, it's a good idea to send
email reminders the week before the interview and the
night before the interview. This will help ensure that the people you've found
actually show up for their interview.
And that's a wrap. Finding great interview
participants takes true effort, but the great research you'll conduct will make
it all worth it. In the next video, you'll learn all about preparing for
interviews. Good luck.