Recruit usability test participants

Get deep insight from our 4.1 million panel, or target segments of your own user base.
  • Verified testers: precise targeting, screening & segmentation
  • Flexible audience: your users, our panel, or a mix of both
  • Mixed methods: supports all moderated & unmoderated research
Sign Up Free
Book a demo
illustrated product image showing three participants, including their profile photo, demographic info, and study status

Trusted by the world’s most customer-centric companies

Supports all methods
Best-in-class recruiting for usability test participants
video icon
See and hear how users think
Recruit participants for usability tests to get in-depth qualitative feedback. Run “think aloud” studies that yield high-quality shareable clips.
post it note icon
Get feedback at every stage
From generative to evaluative research questions, insights from our panel can inform design decisions throughout the product lifecycle.
clipboard with a check mark icon
Test with hard-to-find audiences
Find participants who perfectly match your existing users, down to product usage, skills, roles, behaviors, and more.
“It was so seamless. Once you set up and launch your study, you'll get a list of participants. It was taking me weeks to recruit. Now it takes 24 hours with a ton of people who meet my criteria!”
Matthew Morrison
UX Research Manager, Braze
headshot for Matthew Morrison
An illustrative depiction of Research Hub. A spreadsheet style panel of participant information sits left of a wheel-like circle showcasing icons for Zoom, Lookback, Google Meet, API, and SurveyMonkey.
Advanced targeting & segmentation
Source niche, hard-to-find audiences

With unparalleled options for targeting, screening and verifying testers, control exactly who you’re getting insights from.

a product illustration showing how researchers can target participants by demographic data like job title, seniority, and industry

Hyper-targeted recruiting

Looking for software engineers? Or senior tech leads who work remotely and use your competitor’s product? We got you.

Screened, validated, verified

Need a perfect match? Fine-tune your recruit with segments, screeners, manual profile reviews, and social media verification.

Fast & reliable, every time

Our focus on panel quality and exceptional support mean the vast majority of studies are successfully completed on the first try.
High-depth research
Capture the voice of your customer

Test complex flows to study user-product interactions and get substantive feedback from target users that can deeply inform the direction of your product.

Product screenshot of a usability test screen recording

Human insight—not faceless data

“Think aloud” study? Multi-step concept test? Retrospective probing? Our panel delivers on any study type, length, or complexity.

Persuade your stakeholders

Generate rich storytelling data that moves people. Pull clips and quotes to use in playback sessions and stakeholder presentations.

Run follow up studies

Dig deeper with follow up interviews or a second round of testing. Keep a global record of participation across all studies and methods.
Try User Interviews for your next usability test
computer monitor icon
Usability tests
chat bubble icon
think aloud
post it note icon
card sorts
user flow icon with four shapes connected by three lines
Tree Tests
Sign Up Free
Book a demo
TOP FEATURES FOR USABILITY TESTING
Explore our solution for usability testing recruitment
icon showing three arrows flowing together in a circle
Smart flow
  • Our revamped workflow is simple for participants and hands-off for UX researchers.
  • It adapts to the unique design of your usability test and can flex up with screeners, manual approval, NDAs, and more.
  • Participant comms, tracking, and incentives are fully automated.
check mark icon
Bulk actions
  • Move cohorts of participants through the research experience with one click.
  • Message participants, mark tasks complete, and pay out incentives one-by-one or in bulk.
  • Funnel and summary views make progress tracking simple—even for studies with hundreds of participants.
electrical plug icon
Tool integrations
  • Turn on integrations to connect User Interviews to your team’s favorite testing tools.
  • Your study moves seamlessly from recruiting to testing with our open, flexible, and truly method-agnostic platform.
  • Choose any best-of-breed tool and plug it in to UI to get the highest-quality insights from your target users.
Integrate with popular usability testing tools

Streamline research with our growing suite of integrations. We plug right into your tool stack, so you can source the highest quality participants and automate task tracking across all your favorite research software.

spiral line connecting the logos of Lookback, SurveyMonkey, Zoom, Qualtrics, Loop11, Typeform, Sprig, and User Interviews
icon of a question mark posted on a sign

Usability testing FAQs

What is usability testing?

Usability testing is a popular method of UX research that allows researchers to study user-product interactions and pinpoint usability issues at different stages of the product development cycle. 

During a usability test, researchers ask participants to perform a series of tasks using a product, and then observe to understand how well they’re able to accomplish those tasks. For example, you might ask participants to complete a purchase on your website or send a message using a mobile app prototype. Test sessions can be moderated or unmoderated, remote or in-person, and quantitative, qualitative, or both. Remote testing may require specialized usability testing tools like Loop11, Lookback, or Sprig. 

The goal of a usability study is to identify sticking points in the user experience in order to make recommendations or improvements that will increase people’s ability to interact successfully with the product or service.

When do you do usability testing?

Usability tests are appropriate for nearly any stage in the product development cycle except for the discovery stage. That means you can perform usability testing as soon as you have a functional version or prototype of your product. Each test should be oriented around answering a specific question to keep your test (and its results) manageable. 

To learn more about when, why, and how to perform usability tests, check out the Usability Testing Chapter of our UX Research Field Guide.

How do you recruit users for usability testing?

Recruiting users for usability testing is easy with User Interviews! Find participants outside of your existing user base by recruiting from our panel of 4.1 million users using Recruit, or source target groups from your own participant panel using Research Hub.

You can also try alternative DIY methods for usability testing recruitment, such as recruiting people through social media or Craigslist. However, these methods tend to be more difficult, more time-consuming, and less reliable than using a tried-and-tested platform like User Interviews, especially for larger-scale studies or teams.

How many participants do you need for usability testing?

It depends on your research goals and study design. 

Typically, usability tests focus on depth over breadth, requiring smaller-scale audiences than other research methods like surveys. If you’re running a quantitative usability study, you’ll need to find more participants to achieve statistical significance than if you’re running a qualitative usability study.

Learn about the different factors to consider when choosing your sample size for a usability test in our article, “How Many Participants Do You Need for a Usability Study?

How does someone become a usability tester?

Potential participants can sign up to join the User Interviews panel, browse studies that are actively recruiting, and apply to usability studies that they think they’ll be a good fit for. Our system will also automatically send usability testing recruitment emails to participants in our pool who match your recruiting criteria. From there, participants can take your screener survey, get approved or disqualified, and schedule a test session if they pass the screener. 

Sometimes, researchers may also find people to participate through recruiting agencies, social media networks, or a panel of their own users.

icon of three pieces of paper stacked

Resources for usability testing

More than just User Interviews

Try User Interviews for your next usability study
Sign Up Free
Book a demo