Operationalize Usability Research: Zebra batch recruiting

[brunerae]

We aim to build our participant panel for usability testing as well as recruit target user profiles for upcoming zebra batch component testing. We're using several strategies for recruiting:

• Outreach to new organizations who serve target user profiles we want to recruit
• Partner with 10x and use their new recruiting service to source participants
• Reach out to World Services for the Blind for visually impaired participants

[jaclinec]

I have filled out 10x's research ops intake form to request participants.

I have also reached out to 13 different organizations with links to our public research recruitment page and signup form. As of today, I have only heard back from 3 organizations and one of them costs money to help recruit. I will send follow up emails Monday next week and send emails to new orgs.

Next week, I'll reach out to WSB and send them our signup form.

[jaclinec]

We were able to build a research participant panel that currently has 53 participant signups. Participants were referred by 2 different organizations focused on supporting the visually impaired community as well as CHADD for the ADHD community. One org agreed to put our recruitment 'flyer' in their newsletter and CHADD shared it on their site.

We also partnered with 10x to recruit a few participants. It was especially helpful for trying to recruit people who use adaptive inputs (like switch devices) and voice command users since our outreach efforts had limited success to those groups (they did not respond or few people signed up or responded to me follow up emails).

We held usability testing sessions with 8 participants with various disabilities (low vision and blind, 1 with motor impairment, 1 with ADHD, 1 with anxiety and depression) and assistive technology used (screen readers, zoom magnification). We were not able to recruit people who use Dragon software or other adaptive inputs like switch devices because the people we reached out to didn't respond.