{"id":646044,"date":"2020-04-21T11:20:15","date_gmt":"2020-04-21T18:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-blog-post&p=646044"},"modified":"2020-05-15T11:17:59","modified_gmt":"2020-05-15T18:17:59","slug":"a-5-step-guide-to-recruiting-international-research-participants","status":"publish","type":"msr-blog-post","link":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/articles\/a-5-step-guide-to-recruiting-international-research-participants\/","title":{"rendered":"A five-step guide to recruiting international research participants"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Therese Okraku (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Microsoft and LinkedIn UX researchers recently created a shared community of practice around the topic of international research. This is the second article of a four-part series where we explore the topic of international research best practices. Check out the first article on conducting international UX research here (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"International<\/p>\n

Want to conduct international research but not sure how to\u202fget\u202fstarted? This article will guide you through the process of connecting with international customers in an easy and meaningful way.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Connecting with customers and understanding their unmet needs helps teams develop and evolve great products. As a researcher at Microsoft, my goal is to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. In order to\u202fachieve this goal, it is essential to talk with and visit customers living all across the globe. Over the past two years, I have recruited and talked with hundreds of customers from different locations worldwide. I\u2019ve also learned lots of\u202fhelpful\u202flessons\u202ffrom hearing other researchers\u202fat Microsoft, LinkedIn, and other organizations\u202fshare their experiences conducting international research in different\u202fcontexts. As a result of these experiences, I developed a 5-step approach to building an international research practice\u202fon any product team:<\/p>\n

Step 1: Intentionally screen for international participants\u202f<\/strong><\/p>\n

Start by being intentional about targeting and talking with participants located in different locations. You can start small by talking\u202fwith at least one international participant per study. Then, you can steadily increase the number of international participants you talk with for each study.\u202fOver time, talking with research participants from a variety of different countries and backgrounds will become\u202fpart of\u202fyour team\u2019s\u202fregular research cadence. Looking at the geographical distribution of where your customers are located can help you focus on a few places\u202fwhere you want to\u202flearn more. If you or your team\u202fhave\u202falready collected location information about your research participants, compare that data to where your customers are located and identify gaps.<\/p>\n

\"Recruite<\/p>\n

Once you have identified gaps in your team\u2019s geographic coverage, you can write a screener to intentionally talk with customers from areas you previously missed. Make sure to include geographic-focused questions (city, state, country, and\u202fwhether they are based in a\u202frural, urban,\u202for\u202fsuburban\u202farea) to\u202fhelp you include\u202fparticipants from a wide variety of areas\u202fin your studies. You can use this screener to identify participants in different\u202fmarkets\u202fand monitor how the geographic distribution of your research participant pool changes over time.\u202fIf your team is already doing a great job covering areas where you have existing customers, talk with your team about areas where your team would like to expand or better understand the market. International research can be a great way to\u202flearn about and\u202fdevelop new markets for your product.<\/p>\n

Step 2: Expand the hours during which you conduct research<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another easy way to improve your likelihood of recruiting international research participants is to schedule studies outside of working hours\u2013think like a banker whose working hours are determined by the opening and closing of\u202fthe\u202finternational markets. Waking up early or staying up late to talk with participants can greatly improve your ability to recruit the best international participants for your study. Shifting your work hours just an hour or two\u202fcan be\u202fespecially helpful if you are located on the west coast of the United States and are interested in talking with customers based in Europe or Asia\u202for vice versa. Being flexible about the time in which you meet also helps\u202fyou gain rapport with participants because it allows them to see how invested you are in talking with and learning from them.<\/p>\n

\"Work<\/p>\n

To start\u202fexperimenting with this step,\u202flet people\u202fon your team know you are planning to expand your working hours\u202fto talk with more customers based in different time zones. Ask if they would be willing to start or an hour earlier or later to connect with a customer. You might be surprised how many people are willing to adjust their schedules to talk with a customer. You can also record the video call and schedule a team viewing party during your regular working hours. This can help your team capture user insights and decide on next steps together.\u202fBy distributing\u202fwaking up early or staying up late\u202fto connect with customers\u202facross\u202fyour team, you can scale your research efforts, increase team engagement\u202fwith customers, and\u202freduce your chances of burning out\u202fafter working too many odd hours.<\/p>\n

Step 3: Start remote; visit in-person later\u202f\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beginning a project remotely helps you adjust the scope and budget of the project as you learn more and gain confidence. Conducting a study remotely first helps you ensure that you are talking with the right customers before traveling around the globe. The\u202fprocess\u202fof scheduling and talking with customers remotely can also help you and your team gain the necessary rapport to do more in-depth studies when you visit in person. It can also help expedite this work when you are planning an in-person visit.\u202fLearning about your customers\u2019 needs, habits, and behaviors before meeting with them in-person for the first time provides you with more time for interactive activities, like design sprints or co-design sessions.<\/p>\n

You can start by using\u202feither\u202fan unmoderated or moderated video tool\u202fto\u202fschedule and\u202fcapture insights remotely.\u202fYou can also\u202ftrain your product team to conduct these types of\u202fstudies to scale\u202fthe number of customers you can connect with for a study.\u202fMake sure to invest in a tool\u202for develop a process\u202fthat allows you to capture and share videos and notes after the call, so everyone can benefit from the research learnings.<\/p>\n

One\u202ffun approach our team created was\u202fhosting an adopt a customer day. On this day, each engineer, designer, project manager, and data scientist\u202fwas\u202fmatched with a customer.\u202fThey listened to the recording of their\u202fremote\u202fcall and took detailed\u202fnotes. Then they represented the voice of that\u202fcustomer during a product brainstorm session\u202fand worked with other customer\u202frepresentatives to create an innovative solution to the\u202ftop\u202fproblems\u202fcustomers faced. After this\u202fsession, we asked each person\u202fto\u202fkeep\u202fin touch with\u202ftheir\u202fcustomer\u202fand\u202fbe responsible for getting feedback from them as we iterated on our product’s design.<\/p>\n

\"Start<\/p>\n

This\u202fprocess\u202fof starting with remote research\u202fincreased\u202four team\u2019s\u202fengagement with and desire to travel to\u202ftalk with\u202fglobal customers.\u202fIt helped us\u202fbuild a deeper relationship with\u202four customers\u202fwhile identifying richer insights\u202fthat improved\u202four products.<\/p>\n

Step 4: Search for extremes
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Learn about different contexts by identifying geographic locations or communities where customers approach the problem you’re interested in very differently due to factors like accessibility or cultural differences. Examining these extreme customer situations can help you develop a stronger research perspective and craft a more compelling story for your stakeholders. If you have trouble convincing your team or manager that international research is important, highlighting the different perspective you will gain from traveling to a completely different context can help you make a stronger case for conducting research in another location.<\/p>\n

Step 5: Ask colleagues or connections based in other locations for participant recommendations<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you are having trouble finding participants in a participant location or want to learn more about the local context, it can be helpful to reach out to colleagues or connections based in that area for help. If your organization has an office in another location, employees at this location can be a great source of local knowledge and expertise. It can also provide them with the opportunity to be ambassadors,\u202fhighlight their subject matter expertise, and\u202fmake new connections since they are immersed in that context. Connecting with the sales, support, or outreach parts of your organization can be especially helpful as these teams often already have many strong connections with customers and can help you identify emerging trends across customers.
\n<\/strong>
\nAre you interested in learning more about international research?
\n<\/strong>If you’re interested in this topic and would like to learn more about UX Research and Design at Microsoft, check out\u202four Microsoft Design site to learn about the people, values, and projects that make up our research and design teams.<\/p>\n

How have you recruited international participants for research? Tweet me @thereseokraku (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> or my team @MicrosoftRI (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>!<\/p>\n

Therese Okraku has been a user researcher at Microsoft since 2017, specializing in combining qualitative and quantitative user experience insights to influence product strategy. In her current role, she builds products that help global teams collaborate at Microsoft. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you want to conduct international research but not sure how to\u202fget\u202fstarted? This article will guide you through the process of connecting with international customers in an easy and meaningful way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38703,"featured_media":651681,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-content-parent":616842,"msr_hide_image_in_river":0,"footnotes":""},"research-area":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"class_list":["post-646044","msr-blog-post","type-msr-blog-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_assoc_parent":{"id":616842,"type":"group"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-blog-post\/646044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-blog-post"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-blog-post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38703"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-blog-post\/646044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":659478,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-blog-post\/646044\/revisions\/659478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=646044"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=646044"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=646044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}