Top tips for your design sprint user  testing  recruitment

A design sprint is a powerful insight tool that enables you to get things done - fast.  

It combines all the best bits of business strategy and innovation into a simple, five-day process, which means you can compress months' worth of work into a single week.  

However, if you want to run a truly successful sprint and unlock actionable insights, you need to recruit the right user testers to deliver powerful feedback.  So, read on for your round up of all things user testing recruitment! 

Top tips for design sprint user testing recruitment 

1. Your users are essential 

First things first, if you want to ensure your design sprint is a success, you need to recruit the right users. By making sure you recruit the right people for the user testing stage of your sprint, you can guarantee high quality results.  

After all, if you want to deliver an exceptional customer experience, you need to understand your customers' user journey - so it makes sense that your users need to be representative of your target audience. 

Let’s face it, there’s no point in doing a week of intense hard work only to test your product on a sample that isn’t representative of your target audience, so it’s really important to make the quality of your users a priority if you want to get great results. 

2. Reach out to the right people 

But who are your customers? What are they like? Do they have specific interests or behaviours? By listing the characteristics of the people you want to interview for your user testing, you can identify the criteria needed to find them.  

For example, if you are looking to test a new type of yoga mat, you will probably be looking for yoga lovers. As such, your criteria could include that they practice yoga at least once a week, that they read yoga blogs and magazines and that they follow yoga influencers on social media. 

Once you’ve identified your criteria, if you’re going to get the most bang for your buck, you need to find users who fit the bill. By putting together a screener questionnaire, you can ensure that only the best, most relevant people are put forward for your sprint.  

A good screener is absolutely essential and can make a huge difference to the quality of your results. Not sure how to create one? Then enlist the help of a user recruitment agency to make sure you cover all the necessary bases.  

3. Embrace the power of social 

Now you’ve identified your customers, you need to find them - and one of the best ways to do this is by using social media.  

Social media gives people to share and consume information at an incredibly fast rate, and with 2.95 billion people worldwide now on social platforms, it’s one of the best easy to quickly find users who represent your customers. 

Promoted posts and targeted ads allow you to reach a large number of people in a cost-effective way, and you can tweak your ads to make sure they reach the right people.  

What’s more, if you want to interview people who you know are interested in your company, posting a link to the screener on your Twitter or Facebook page is a super easy way to reach your audience.  

4. Get creative when it comes to hard to reach participants 

Rule number four: if you’re targeting a hard to reach audience, you need to get creative.  

As well as using social media and refer-a-friend schemes, you should reach out to users who are already customers and make sure you tap into your own network too. You could also ask your sales team for existing customers or potential leads.  

It’s also really important to advertise and do your research. A quick search on Google will give you tons of info about different forums, groups and societies that you could advertise on.  

Alternatively, if you are looking for professionals, have a look for professional bodies or associations you could reach out to. Another important point is to always offer an incentive when attracting hard to reach participants so you make it worth their while to take part.  

Finally, always over recruit so you are prepared for any dropouts on the day.  

5. Don’t go it alone  

Teamwork makes for dreamwork, right? If this all sounds like a lot to take on board there is always the option of enlisting the help of an expert user recruitment agency.  

By getting the experts involved with your sprint as soon as possible, you will be able to source the best possible participants - even the hard to reach ones mentioned above - to make sure your design sprint delivers powerful results.  

How? Well, for starters, they will be able to efficiently and effectively run targeted social media campaigns and use pre-recruited panels to reach out to respondents that meet even the strictest of criteria. They can also help you with feasibility so you know that your sprint is achievable.  

What’s more, they can help with other essential aspects of the recruitment process, such as creating screeners to make sure you find the best, most relevant users for your user testing - and they will also be there to take care of the admin and make sure you stay organised.  

Basically, by working in partnership with you throughout the duration of your sprint, a user recruitment agency will ensure everything goes off without a hitch - which means you can free up your time to focus on your sprint!  

6. Make sure you plan ahead 

User recruitment takes time - which is why we always recommend planning ahead and giving yourself a good few weeks to recruit users. Likewise, if you are using an agency to help with recruitment, it’s really important to get them involved as early in the process as possible.  

After all, getting the right people might take time, but high-quality participants are non-negotiable if you want to ensure quality feedback. 

If you want to get the most out of your agency, brief them as soon as possible to make sure they completely understand the aims and objectives of your sprint.  

The sooner everyone is brief, the sooner you can start to find participants - so make sure you give you agency a shout as soon as you have decided to do a sprint.  

How Angelfish can help

At Angelfish, our unique recruitment process uses a combination of digital methods, refer a friend campaigns and an audience of over 26,000 respondents to make sure we find the right participants, fast.  

What’s more, unlike other user recruitment agencies, we’ll also work together with you throughout the whole process, helping you to manage everything from briefing and recruitment through to remuneration and over-recruits. 

By getting the Angelfish team involved with your sprint as soon as possible, we will be able to source high quality participants whilst also offering bespoke advice and guidance so you can build a design sprint that works.  

Want to find out more about why you should do a design sprint? Contact Angelfish today to discover our design sprint recruitment services. Alternatively, download Your Ultimate Guide To Qual Market Research Recruitment for free below:

Enjoyed this article? Here are some other resources you might like:   

What is a design sprint?  
Why do a design sprint?
Design Sprints - Angelfish Fieldwork  
Why social media can help you find fresh respondents
What makes us different - Angelfish Fieldwork