I agree with Rob, but in house recruiting is time consuming, which means it costs the company money, but it is a hidden cost. It costs about $100 for scheduled participant to use a recruiting service and they take on the burden of replacing no shows and such. If you find a recruiting agency you like, stick with them. Give them a very detailed user profile and provide the qualifying criteria for each study and let them do the work so you can focus on designing and administering the tests. That is what Microsoft does because they need thousands of participants every year; they contract with vendors to do the work to get butts into chairs.
I have done lots of remote testing, and it often works well, depending on what you are testing or evaluating. But I have had even more no-shows with remote testing and I think this is because they have no sense that anyone will miss them, perhaps. And when Rob says pay more money, that means paying people what they feel their time is worth. You are taking 1, 2, or 3 hours of their time in order to improve a product and make a higher profit. They know that and I think participants sometimes feel we take advantage of them. Never expect people to show up out of altruism. Mary Deaton Manager, STC Usability and User Experience On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 7:39 AM, Rob Tannen <rtan...@bresslergroup.com>wrote: > Vicki - Some recommended bast practices for participant recruitment > and retention: > > -Expect a 25% cancellation/no-show rate. So for every four slots you > need to fill, you need to recruit 5 people. You can schedule extra > slots or use "floaters" -- people scheduled to serve as > substitutes overlapping with specific time slots. If you're running > ahead of schedule you can include the floaters as well. > > -Remind recruited participants ahead of time (week before, then day > before). Tell people to come in 15 minutes before the actual testing > slow and then call them on their cell phones if they are not there at > that time. > > -Pay more money. Increase your participant incentive by 10-20% can > be a cost-effective way to improve show-up rates. > > > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > Posted from the new ixda.org > http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38251 > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > -- Mary Deaton Yes we can. Yes we did. Yes we will ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
