Discover how Angelfish Fieldwork found the perfect user testing participants for our client’s project, enabling them to adapt the safeguarding elements of their online streaming service and shape the future of children's TV consumption.
A leading UK media company
To gather insights that would enable the company to safeguard their online streaming service for children
Face-to-face usability test
45 minutes
£30-£40
When a leading UK media company came to Angelfish Fieldwork in search of respondents to test the safeguarding aspects of their online streaming service, we positively jumped at the opportunity!
Read on to find out how our expertise enabled the company to gather all the insights that they needed without a hitch...
Our client for this project was a leading and highly renowned UK media company. We had worked with this client on other projects previously, and at the time of writing, are continuing to run successful projects in partnership with them.
Our client wanted to investigate child safeguarding of the company’s online streaming service and observe how easy it was for both guardians and children to create an account and sign in by engaging with a prototype.
The participants for this project were children aged between 2 to 12 in two different locations, along with their guardians.
One of the biggest challenges with this project was the timings of the sessions. Many children couldn’t attend before 4pm because they were at school.
What’s more, because participants’ guardians were concerned about their children being out late and not having enough time for homework, dinner etc., there was a very small window of time for the sessions to take place.
Conducting market research with children is typically more unpredictable than with adults, and can often result in higher dropout rates.
During this project, it sometimes meant that a different family member would need to attend, and the Angelfish team would need to screen new prospective user testing participants, carry out our clients' due diligences and gather consent from the attending parent/guardian at late stages in the project timeline.
As part of the user testing study, the participants’ guardians needed to take screenshots of the online streaming service and return them before the session took place. It frequently proved challenging to ensure sure everyone returned theirs on time.
We kicked things off with a thorough briefing session, which meant we could ensure that we fully understood our client’s objective. Here, we used our problem-solving and project management skills to offer expert advice on how to move forward.
This was made significantly easier by our years of experience carrying out market research with children, and an already well-established and positive working relationship with our client.
Due to the nature of the study, the big recruitment focus for us was via referrals and highly targeted social media campaigns – in fact, most samples were recruited in this way as opposed to panel recruitment.
We deployed every ounce of our recruitment know-how, searching high and low to find excellent respondents that perfectly matched our client’s criteria.
The in-depth understanding we gained from the briefing session also meant we were able to run a super-tight ship and approve or decline participants at a rapid pace within the recruitment timeframe.
Because of the unpredictable nature of this audience, we successfully recommended including an overrecruit in case of dropouts, and validated over double the sample we needed to ensure the best, most representative respondents were selected.
From our previous experience of conducting market research and usability testing with children, we know that it’s vital to get the guardians/carers on board – and one thing that really helped with the recruitment for this study was that we were able to disclose that it was for such a renowned media company.
This helped build a sense of trust with an unknown parent/guardian audience – and the fact that the topic area was to do with safeguarding also really helped to strike a chord with guardians/carers!
Another thing we were able to draw on from our previous experience of recruiting young user testing participants was that the schedule needed to be flexible.
Organising children’s time with activities can often be stressful for guardians, so it was important that everything ran as smoothly as possible – which is why we suggested offering more slots than the initial ones provided that were proving to be too restrictive.
We also decided to offer the slots based on the children’s ages, making sure that the in-demand after-school slots weren’t being filled up with those who didn’t attend school.
Details such as providing in-depth instructions on directions to find the building and explaining what would happen on arrival (bag checks, etc.) also ensured that the sessions could start promptly.
We additionally suggested that guardians should bring multiple children along to the session to make things easier, which ended up being a plus for the researchers!
When it comes to conducting market research with children and young people, it’s really important to make sure that the children are as comfortable as possible so that they feel relaxed enough to get stuck into the research.
With permission, we passed on the names of the children to the researchers in advance so that it could be more personable, and the researchers could really build a rapport with the children.
We’re really happy to report that our team’s hard work wholly paid off! The client was absolutely thrilled with the project; all respondents attended as planned, we had hit the nail of the recruitment quota on the head, all the respondents were spot on, and the insights uncovered were truly transformative.
What’s more, the respondents really enjoyed taking part, and loved helping to shape the future of what children watch on TV!
Run an in-depth briefing session – Make sure you get a clear brief and understand the client’s objectives from the very start of the project.
Always include an overrecruit – this is especially important when children are taking part, and ensures that you can still fulfil your quotas with high quality participants in case of dropouts.
Validation is essential – this means you can be sure that the right respondents take part.
Build trust and a rapport with participants – and, in the case of research with children, with their guardians/carers, too! The more on board they are, the better the insights you will gather.
Keep things flexible where possible – Life is stressful for guardians when it comes to arranging things for their children – so keep things like research time slots and task return deadlines flexible.
Make sure that your participants are comfortable – taking part in market research can be nerve-wracking for everyone, children included! So be sure that you take every step possible to make the project enjoyable and stress-free to take part in.
If you have read this case study and are keen to see similar outcomes for your own brand’s project, get in touch with us today!
We are not only a renowned for recruiting high quality user testing participants here at Angelfish Fieldwork, but also for sourcing respondents for a wide range of other market research methodologies, and for a plethora of different target audiences and sectors.
As such, when you choose to team up with us, you’ll have your own expert project management team working with you from the start, providing expert advice, regular updates and complete management of the process.
We’ll also be on hand throughout the duration of your project to provide expert guidance every step of the way – so you can benefit from all our years of experience from the word “go”!
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