Our project builder will help you easily launch your next project in a snap! You can also schedule a demo with one of our team to learn more about User Interviews, or you can test out our project builder experience on your own.

You can begin building a project here and learn more about what happens after you launch your project here.

Step 1: Choose the audience, study type, and study format

These options help us tailor the rest of the project builder to your needs. For instructional purposes, we'll be showing screenshots for a consumer 1-on-1 online study throughout this guide. Please note that if you choose a different audience, study type, or study format that the project builder may look slightly different, as we populate fields specific to those selections.

Audience

• Recruit participants include all participants in our database. Our team targets specific participants based on your project attributes to help find the right candidates for your study.
• Research Hub participants, are participants you upload in a CSV or access from your existing Hub panel. These may be customers who already use your product, or panel of participants you've sourced.

• Consumers, or general panel participants, and are a good fit for studies discussing gaming, food, family, health, beauty, fitness, etc.
• Professionals, or B2B panel participants, are employed participants, and are a good fit for studies discussing someone's job experience, job responsibilities, the software or tools they use at work, etc. When you select "Professionals", you'll also be able to target by job title, industry, and company size. If you're on a paid subscription that does not have "Professionals" as part of your plan, or launching a PAYG project, you will see an additional cost for these participants.

Study type

• 1-on-1 interviews are sessions where the participant will meet with your team. Most commonly, these are moderated online sessions. These studies may be conducted online, over the phone, or in person.
• Focus groups are sessions where a group of participants will meet at the same time, and are typically moderated by someone on your team. These studies may be conducted online, over the phone, or in person.
• Multi day studies are sessions where participants complete multiple interviews, focus groups, diary entries, tasks, surveys, user tests, etc. over the course of a stretch of days. These studies may be conducted online, over the phone, and/or in person.
• Unmoderated tasks are usually surveys or user tests where the participant completes an online task of some sort on their own.

Study format

• Online studies will give the option later in the builder to add a default session link or utilize our Zoom integration to automatically generate unique meeting links for confirmed participants.
• Over the phone studies will give the option later in the builder to tell participants whether you'll be calling them or if they should dial-in to a number at the time of their session.
• In person studies will give the option later in the builder you'll be able to specify a location, or choose if you want to meet at the participant's home, office, or a mutually agreed upon location like a coffee shop.

Step 2: Project overview

Project details

• Your internal title is a great place to add a PO number, quota or persona information, a group number, etc. Only your team and the UI team see this title, so name your study whatever best helps you recognize the study.
• Your public title is what participants see as the name of your study. We recommend NOT using the default "User Research Study"—studies without unique titles tend to get less applies since they're not very alluring. Title your study something fun, eye-catching, or detailed to get more applies!
• Your public description is what participants see as a high-level overview of your study. Participants rely on the description to get a feel for your study and determine if your study is worth applying to, so add as many (non-biasing) details here as you can. Again, the more standout your description, typically the more successful the recruit!

Technical requirements (if an online study)

Computer with webcam is the most popular choice for online studies, but a tablet or smartphone may be just fine (or preferred) depending on your study. For example, if you're doing a mobile user test, you may select smartphone only to ensure participants complete the study on their phones.

Step 3: Session details

Give more information on how the session will be conducted, add an NDA or release form with Document Signing, set an incentive, and provide session instructions.

Session detail

For an online study, choose the default moderator, session length, and the meeting location. The default moderator automatically populates the name of the person building the project but can be updated to be any teammate.

If the default moderator has the Zoom integration, the Zoom meeting location will be clickable. Otherwise, input a default session link under "other location link". Confirmed participants will be automatically sent a unique Zoom link if Zoom is selected, and will be sent the default session link pasted in the other link field if it is selected.

Document Signing

The Document Signing add-on automates getting signatures from participants on any type of document before a participant confirms their session, helping make sure all confirmed participants have signed your document.

If your team does not have the Document Signing add-on, the green upload button will not be available. If you're interested in adding Document Signing to your subscription, email development@userinterviews.com. They'll be able to best assist!

Incentives

You have 2 options: UI can distribute incentives for your project so your team doesn't have to worry about it, or your team can manually distribute incentives. If UI distributes incentives, participants who complete a session will have a choice between select reward and currency options. If your team distributes incentives, a field will appear to write in the form of payment being issued.

We encourage researchers to offer a strong, fair incentive. Higher incentives tend to garner more applications, while lower than average paying studies may have fewer applications. If you're unsure how much to offer, check out our data-backed incentive calculator.

Session instructions

Although an optional step, we really recommend you provide all session details in this field. Participants who confirm their session automatically receive information in this field as part of their confirmation email, reminder email, and can always access this information via their profile.

We encourage you to include instructions in this field before approving participants, and utilizing this field vs. emailing participants off platform with information. Participants know to look here as their source of truth for session details, so take advantage of this field! 

Step 4: Characteristics

Set location, demographic, and technical targeting criteria. For B2B studies, additional characteristic fields will populate for job title, industry, company size, and small business ownership.

Location characteristics

For remote studies, specify which cities, states, or countries we should recruit in. If a specific location doesn't matter, feel free to select all countries.

Basic characteristics

Target participants based on:

• Age
• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Level of education
• Employment status
• Type of income
• Household income
• Marital status
• Children
• Living situation
• Homeowner

We recommend only choosing necessary characteristics and using the "key characteristic" toggle to flag key criteria. If you have flexibility with demographic criteria, consider either selecting more options for each section or leaving it blank to not narrow on those criteria at all. This helps us cast a wider net when recruiting. Often, participants may be an excellent fit for your study, aside from one demographic criterion, so having some wiggle room from the start with basic characteristics means you'll likely have more participants to choose from.

Technical characteristics

These targeting fields are especially handy for mobile studies, app studies, gaming studies, where the device type matters or the experience differs or is unavailable for certain OS's or browsers.

Step 5: Screener survey

All Recruit projects require a screener. If you're utilizing your Hub panel for this project, you can skip this step if additional screening isn't necessary.

Take advantage of screening features like:

• Reuse an existing screening, so you don't have to start from scratch! If you or a teammate already used a screener that would work for your new project, you can select it from the dropdown, then edit or add to it if needed.
• Pick from different question formats. Select pick one, pick any, short answer, or long answer. Simply use the drop-down to choose a question format, or use the duplicate symbol to copy a question, then make edits as needed.
• Add skip logic to branch participants to related pages or questions. This is especially helpful if you're recruiting multiple personas within one project! You can also use skip logic to end the study for participants who selected rejecting answers.
• Mark questions as required or not required. This is useful if you don't want to make a question required if it doesn't apply to all participants, or if the question just gathers additional information. For example, I may want to add a short answer question under the example question above that says "If you answered Other, what type of pet do you have", and not make it required since that may not apply to many participants. OR, I could use skip logic to branch participants who answered Other to a new set of questions.
• Set questions as key criteria. You can specify which information is key to making recruiting decisions with a simple toggle in the project builder
• Move questions between pages. Sometimes reordering the flow of questions makes for a better experience for the participant, or is necessary for skip logic. Move questions around as you please! If moving the question breaks your skip logic, we'll alert you.

As a general rule of thumb, try to keep screeners as short as possible. Long, complicated screeners tend to wear out participants, and may deter them from completing your application. We also recommend spelling out acronyms, using plain/common language, making screener questions as inclusive as possible, and being conscious to include "None of the above" and "Other" answer options so participants aren't forced to choose an option that doesn't suit them.

If you're unsure if your screener is clear, launch your project and send the application link to a friend. Often a second set of eyes, especially those of someone not affiliated with the project, can help you identify if something could be clarified.

Step 6: Scheduling

Scheduling details

Select the number of participants you'd like to have sessions with. The requested participants number helps us know how many participants to invite to apply to your study, so try to make it an accurate representation of your study needs. You can increase or decrease this number after launch.

The participant review options determine if you'll be choosing who you have sessions with vs. if we can automatically approve participants that are a 100% match. If your subscription has Double Screening, check that field to gain access to participant phone numbers and email addresses, as well as be able to message participants, prior to approving them.

Add your availability

We recommend setting your availability before launching so you can easily start scheduling participants as soon as they start qualifying through your project. When you connect your calendar, it's even easier to add sessions since you see your availability within the project builder. You can also edit the schedule after you launch your project!

Step 7: Launch!

Once all sections of the project builder have been successfully completed (denoted by the white checkmarks), the "Review & launch" button will be clickable. If you have any grey checkmarks for a section, go back to that section and find the red error messaging. Fix the error, then either move to the next section so the fix autosaves, or click "Save & continue".

On the next screen, you'll see an overview of your project, as well as the cost estimate based on current factors (number of participants, consumer vs. B2B). If you run sessions with more participants, less participants, researcher canceled participants, have credits added after launch, etc. this cost may update. Take a glance through that overview, and launch!

Your dedicated project coordinator will review your project and will notify you of any errors or suggestions prior to starting recruitment. If you need anything updated that you're unable to update yourself on your launched project, email projects@userinterviews.com and your PC will assist you.

Happy researching!