From Canada to Korea – How to find suitable participants worldwide

Interactive products that are easy to use for German users are not necessarily easy to use for users in other countries. Finding suitable test participants abroad, however, poses a special challenge. As a member of the International Usability Partners (IUP), User Interface Design GmbH (UID) talked about experiences in international recruiting at the UPA Conference in Austin, Texas.

At the annual conference of the Usability Professionals Association (UPA) from June 11 to 15, 2007, usability professionals from all over the world exchanged information on the newest developments in this industry and their experiences and ideas for the future. A lot of the exchange was around international usability tests. What do we need to consider? How can we make international usability tests a success?

Master the challenge

For several years, UID has been conducting international usability tests. In order to cope with the challenges of cultural characteristics of the different target markets, UID has established a network of international usability companies, the International Usability Partners (IUP). In more than 20 countries worldwide, the IUP conduct projects - on the basis of a joint understanding of methodologies and quality.

User studies need to be planned carefully

Good recruitment of participants is crucial to the success of any usability project. Jakob Biesterfeldt, Usability Consultant at UID, knows about the problems: "Without suitable, representative test participants the test results are useless. We discovered that recruiting suitable test participants in other countries requires special effort. Criteria such as lifestyle, income or social class cannot be compared across cultures easily.“

Amberlight Partners and UID proudly present

How to find suitable test participants and how to deal with recruiting agencies were the topics of the presentation by Robert Gillham of Amberlight Partners from London and Jakob Biesterfeldt of UID from Munich. The title of the paper, which was written by all six international usability partners, is: "Guidelines for Successful Recruitment in International Usability Studies".

International Recruiting – also in the Web 2.0

Robert and Jakob used the blog of the Italian partner Experientia to give daily updates of their impressions of the UPA Conference. In addition, there is further information about international recruiting on the IUP website.

The images show an ongoing usability test and the logo of the International Usability Partners (IUP).

Further information

Website of the UPA Conference 2007
Blog "IUP at the UPA"
Website of the IUP

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