Research Participant's Experience: How to Make Your Sessions More Human

Who is your research process designed for? Your company? Your client? You, the researcher?

What about the participant?

Being a participant in a research study is not normal, natural, nor easily understood. Participants often wonder why they were selected or what is expected of them. After a study, they may have no idea if their contribution was truly valuable or if their time was well spent.

Researchers are pressed for time and often don’t do their own recruiting. Recruited participants are distilled into sets of data and not seen as people until they show up for the session.

This creates an environment where it’s difficult to quickly build up the trust required to have honest conversations.

In this talk, I explore simple methods I’ve used to help research participants better understand their role in the research process and how I engage them before, during, and after our time together. I’ll share some of the delightful, unexpected outcomes of engaging participants in a more human way.

Eddie James Lead UX Researcher, Calendly

Eddie James believes in accepting crazy challenges. 100 research sessions in 2 weeks? Let's do it! No budget? No problem! He also believes in using the resulting successes - and failures - to educate stakeholders, team members, and himself about research and people. He is adept at rapidly gaining trust with users and truly listening to what they have to say. Eddie has led research efforts at Comcast, Vanguard, Cox Automotive/Manheim, and currently, Calendly. For 7 years, he ran his own UX research consultancy specializing in self-service kiosks, ATMs, and the usability of physical space. Eddie is passionate about making research more human and regularly posts research tips and tricks on Linkedin. #UXeddie

We'll send out the Zoom passcode the day of the event.