Elizabeth Snowdon

When you select users for usability testing, you have to ensure that their background and abilities are representative of your product’s intended user profile. Your test results will only be valid if the people who participate in the test are typical users of the product.

How do you recruit users for usability testing?
Recruiting the target audience or user profile for usability testing usually takes two to three weeks. Some sources of test participants include the below:

1. Your own company’s list of existing customers
Marketing usually has access to this list and can generate a spreadsheet of these users. Most of the users that are registered are the systems administrators; however, they are good contacts and can often refer you to other user profiles you maybe recruiting for.

2. Referrals from Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing employees usually foster good relationships with customers. It is also to your advantage to develop a good relationship with these folks as they can help you out. You do need to watch out and ensure that you are not re-using the same customers that the Marketing department talk to frequently for requirements elicitation.

3. Craigslist
Another great source of participants is advertising in the et cetera section of the jobs section of Craigslist. Most cities in the US have started charging for advertising. This is still a very cost-effective method to recruit users that may also use competitive products.

4. Company web site or blog
You can also advertise for test participants in your company web site or blog. This is a great way to build a database of prospective participants. The prospective users can register their information onto the web site which you regularly mine data from each time you are ready to recruit.

5. Societies and Associations
Professional societies and associations are a good source of contacts if you are looking for participants from specific professions (e.g. accountants). These groups often have forums, blogs or other social media and maybe willing to advertise your upcoming usability test on your behalf.

Last week, I presented a Usability Testing 101 – introduction to usability testing at VanQ. VanQ is a community association in Metro Vancouver that focuses on encouraging the exchange of software quality assurance and testing knowledge and fostering networking among meeting participants. The meetings are held on the last Thursday of each month to share information regarding quality assurance and testing best practices. The slides from that presentation have been uploaded to slideshare. In this presentation, I discuss what usability is, why it is important, the information that goes into a test plan and the two types of tests that are typically conducted — formative and summative tests.