Well, it’s finally over. 2020 certainly wasn’t the year anyone asked for, but our product team powered through the challenges to build some really cool stuff. And by “really cool stuff,” we mean features that make research recruiting quicker, more efficient, and all-around better for our customers. As we celebrate the end of a difficult year, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on and highlight some of the good things that came out of 2020.
Here are some of our favorite features from this year. There’s something for everyone here—from the team that’s working remotely due to COVID and needing to change the way they collaborate on projects, to the business that pivoted focus and now needs to talk to international research participants to validate new ideas.
🔁 : Features only available as part of a paid subscription plan.
For the customers that said "I need to remotely collaborate with my team," we built:
- Draft sharing—Get a second set of eyes on your project draft prior to launch.
- Project comments and mentions—Use when deciding which participants to select, or confirming attendance.
- Team calendars—View your team’s availability so you can add sessions that work for everyone.
- Session moderators—Assign moderators on the session level so your team can divvy up leading research sessions.
- Draft commenting— Give and get feedback from your team on a draft. Especially helpful for building screeners.
For customers who said "I need to simplify logistics and cut down on back and forth tasks," we built:
- Participant fitness flags—Mark a participant as best fit, potential fit, or poor fit. Helps your team know which participants you’ve reviewed.
- Search, filter, export participant lists— Search and filter your participant list in-app, or instantly export a CSV of participants for in-depth filtering.
- Invite past participants to projects—This feature makes it easy to invite back participants who gave you valuable feedback in the past.
- Participants can propose alternate times—Schedule a time with a participant that works for both of you. No back and forth to coordinate availability.
For customers who said "I need to do things quickly," we built:
- Bulk message participants—This feature is especially handy if you want to share additional information or send a reminder to multiple participants.
- Drag and drop screener questions—Changed your mind about where you want a question? Drag and drop the question within a page, or to a new page.
- Auto approve participants—Short on time? We’ll automatically approve any participants who matched your demographic criteria and screener.
- Reuse screener surveys—You spent a lot of time making that awesome screener—save and reuse it in future projects. You can always edit later if your needs change. 🔁
For customers who said "I need to organize, invite, and communicate with my own users," we built:
- Advanced Hub filters—Find participants that match your criteria and invite them to your Hub projects. You can even filter Hub participants by project history.
- Hub Invite Rules—Stop accidentally over-inviting participants, which can cause invite fatigue. Set rules at a team level about which participants you can invite. Available on paid Hub subscription plans. 🔁
- Email Themes—Match your Hub emails to your branding, colors, and style. Makes users more likely to recognize and respond to your emails. Available on paid Hub subscription plans. 🔁
For customers who said "I need automations that save me time and manual steps," we built:
- A User Interviews <> Zoom integration—Automatically generate and send unique Zoom links to study participants, saving a lot of otherwise manual work.
- Document Signing—Add a NDA, release form, or other document to your project that you need signed and we’ll automate collecting signatures. All confirmed participants have signed your document and are ready to participate, helping you breathe easy day or sessions. Available as an add-on to any paid subscription.
And for customers who said "I need to recruit from a global audience," we built:
- Expanded to Australia, UK, France, Germany, South Africa—Get more diverse perspectives and talk to users outside the U.S. and Canada. You can now recruit from 5 more countries, meaning your research can be more representative of your consumer base.
If you don’t already use User Interviews for research, we hope this list gets you excited about all the ways we’re working to make your research practice faster, more efficient, and less work for your team. If you’re a User Interviews customer, we encourage you to try out these features on your next project. (All the features on this list are free for Hub and Recruit users unless otherwise noted.)
Happy researching!
