By Nate Brown
There are many different aspects to the creation of a user research study. UX teams have a lot to consider when developing a research plan to collect insights from users. One of the first factors to consider before even identifying what features and structure to build is to outline the target audience the team is designing for. Many assume that building target markets and personas is the job of marketing teams. However, understanding who the consumer is and how they react to the company’s digital assets is a major cornerstone of effective user research.
This article will help to outline how to define a participant persona. But more importantly, it will discuss how to implement the persona into a research study screener. Knowing the audience is half the battle, properly sourcing for a specific profile is just as crucial to a successful research campaign.
Clarify the Personas
Before creating a screener to filter participants for a study, let’s discuss outlining who the target audience is. Building a company’s consumer profiles from scratch can be a long and time-consuming initiative. Before doing so, check with other departments and see what work has been done previously in this area. Departments like marketing and sales often have all the information a research team would need to identify what demographics are relevant to the research study at hand. Once that information has been obtained, it’s time to create personas!
A persona can be defined as a generic overview of a common customer type. This is normally outlined in the form of a fictional character that represents popular characteristics of the customer type. It normally includes a picture of what this persona may look like and some typical habits and values. Note that a UX research project can include multiple target personas for a range of user feedback. In the example of a grocery store chain, the following persona would be applicable:
Mary: Stay-at-home mom with two kids.
35 years old, living in Seattle, WA.
Shops weekly for groceries and household items.
Values discounted products and organic foods.
Loyal to her local store and tends to stick to products she knows.
Active on social media and enjoys outdoor activities with her kids.
Identify the Specificity Needed
Now that we have identified the audiences for the research project, it is time to move on to the next step of the recruitment process. Before actually adding any questions to the screener, we need to discuss what is often misconstrued in screener creation. To what degree do the study participants need to match the defined persona?
In a perfect world, the research team would have all study participants match the targeted personas exactly as it was drawn out. However, when using an outside recruitment panel to source participants, it’s unlikely you be able to get persona matches for all study participants. What’s important to note here is that depending on your research plan, exact persona matches are not needed to get insightful feedback. Consider the following two research scenarios:
Usability Studies - These research studies do not require exact profile matches, but a relevant demographic is encouraged. This is because regardless of whether a participant fits the study persona perfectly, the usability feedback of the digital asset is likely to be similar across a larger range of participant profiles. For usability studies, try to create a screener that incorporates the key aspects of the persona (age range, employment status, industry, etc.). But keep the overall screening criteria more broad to ensure a faster turnaround time for the project.
Generative Research - In this research scenario, the team is likely trying to understand the values and habits of a specific target market. This is normally early on in the design process when the team is trying to understand what to build or how to approach the desired change. This is a situation where being more stringent on the recruitment criteria is valid. It can lead to longer turnaround times and a more expensive research price tag. However, this research demands a narrower field of participants to get relevant insights.
Creating the Screener
Now that all the intangibles are out of the way, it's time to build the recruitment criteria! The following tips and tricks are related to the recruitment process within the Userlytics platform. If you are not using this specific research platform, many of the concepts should translate into similar tools.
Setting Demographic Filters - This capability allows you to quickly filter out participants based on their demographic criteria (age, income, etc.). Use the personas created earlier to identify the relevant information to set in this step. A word of caution when using recruitment panels, don’t go overly narrow on demographics. Instead, set broad demographics filters and go more narrow in the screener questions themselves. This will ensure that participants who would have otherwise qualified for the study, don’t unintentionally get rejected due to the filters used.
Avoiding Yes/No Questions - It may be the easiest way to build a screener, but yes or no questions make the screener much less accurate. While most participants going through a screener are doing so in good faith, it’s important to not make the screener too obvious to get through. Instead of yes or no options, give the participants a range of options and ask them to select the best match. See the video example below (three minutes).
Add in Red Herrings - Red herrings are a great way to ensure participants are being truthful in the screener. This is normally done by adding questions or answer options that identify if a participant is telling the truth. A good example of this would be asking participants which of the following stores they shop with and having one of the options be a fictitious store that would reject the participant if selected. One or two red herrings are a good idea, but more than two are not necessary for the purposes of the screener. See an example of this in the video above.
Limit Disqualifying Questions to Five or Less - This tip goes back to the idea of having a screener that qualifies relevant participants but is not so narrow that it is difficult to recruit in general. By having more than four or five disqualifying questions, the screener makes the recruitment overly difficult and unlikely to fill quickly. Feel free to include more questions with no disqualification logic (i.e. anyone would pass regardless of their answer) in order to get additional information about who the participants are.
Conclusion
While the screener is an important part of the overall research study, remember to not overthink the criteria for qualification. The screening process should be a quick and simple building process. Identify the personas that would be relevant to the study, set a few demographic filters, then add up to ten screener questions with five or fewer of them including disqualification logic.
If you are an active user of the Userlytics platform, remember that the Userlytics team can always help you in the creation of your screener. Your Account Manager can quickly review screener logic and provide suggestions, or you can have a member of our Professional Services team create the screener for you!
If you have any questions or would like to discuss research strategy together, please feel free to contact me at nbrown@userlytics.com.
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