Ways of getting representation for your participant pool:

- It’s easiest to reach out to people who have already had contact with your 
company or group

- Use social media and email lists

- Go to locations where people who fit your research profile can be found

- Use advertisements in relevant locations on the internet and in real life

- Make sure people aren’t participating just for the money

- Don’t include people if you think they won’t give good feedback

- Don’t reuse people from previous research

- Use a screener with a few questions to easily weed people out 


Finding Representative Members

The following questions can be used to create a profile of your product's target audience:

- Who is the target audience of the product? 

- Who is currently using the product? 

- What types of people could benefit from the product?

- What are the demographics of current users?

- Who will give the best feedback?



University of Vermont

Ohio State University, Columbus

Having the appropriate participant pool is the foundation of conducting successful user research. The researchers need to recruit users who can represent the target group/end users in order to improve the products based on results and feedback.

User Research Participants

Goodman, E., Kuniavsky, M., & Moed, A. (2012). Observing the user experience: A practitioner's guide to user research. Elsevier.

Observing the user experience: A practitioner's guide to user research

- Mortensen, D. (2020). The basics of recruiting participants for user research. The Interaction Design Foundation. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/the-basics-of-recruiting-users-for-usability-testing

User Research Participants References

Two types of user research participants that should be avoided or controlled: Employees and Déformation Professionnelle:

- Employees might feel the need to leave positive feedback. 

- Déformation Professionnelle are professionals in the field of the given product, and therefore they might evaluate the product based on their professional knowledge instead of a pure user perspective.

- While designing usability tests and recruiting participants, making sure to include accessibility issues and users with disabilities.


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