This is the Nielsen Norman Group UX Podcast.
I'm Terese Fessenden.
This episode feels a bit like time travel because all of you will be tuning in in 2022
while I'm recording here in 2021 and also am mentally stuck in 2020, the year that never
seems to end.
But nonetheless, 2022 lies before us, and this time of year often beckons us to reflect
on the past and to consider what the next year will hold.
So I think it was pretty great that I got a chance to do that with the folks at User
Interviews who host another great podcast called Awkward Silences.
In this episode, you'll hear me speak with hosts Aaron and JH, and we get into the weeds
about how user research has changed over the past couple years, and also how in many ways
it hasn't changed at all.
We discussed some innovative solutions to pandemic-fueled research constraints, shifts
toward inclusive and ethical research, and how researchers can further shape their own
careers as they look forward into the next year.
So with that, here are Aaron May and JH Forrester.
All right, well, thanks for joining us.
We've got Aaron and JH with us from Awkward Silences, which is very exciting.
How are you guys doing today?
Nice and awkward.
I'm ready.
Yep.
Yeah, doing well.
Awesome.
Yeah.
So you guys host this awesome podcast at User Interviews called Awkward Silences, which
can we just say that title is excellent, especially when your main topic is about interviews and
research and things do, in fact, get pretty awkward.
But really celebrating that I think is great.
So that said, though, you're more than podcast guests, and I think it's important to share
what you do and the important roles that you currently play at User Interviews.
Yeah, you want me to jump in here?
Do it.
I can take it.
So I'm JH.
I work at User Interviews, so product management and product design.
And I've been with the team now for a little over four years and started as the only person
doing all of those things.
And right now we have a team of eight with a couple open recs, so we'll be at 11 soon.
And so, yeah, really just trying to figure out what our users need and how we can deliver
that in a way that also lines up with our business goals and doing the standard product
thing and trying to make sure there's a lot of research as a part of that as well.
Yes.
Yes, of course.
And I mean, naturally, the brand is very much research.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And a similar story to JH, I joined just a few months after he did about four years ago,
was a marketing team of one for a year.
Fast forward four years, I've got a marketing team, as well as a growth team, which kind
of sits at the intersection of marketing and product.
We've got growing teams on both sides, hiring more, so definitely check out our careers
page and join us.
It's been a lot of fun and it's been great to incorporate user research into the work
that we do both in the marketing and growth team and learn a lot about the practice by
doing it.
So yeah, it's been a lot of fun.
Awesome.
Yeah.
And I imagine that being your user base is a lot of UX researchers, you probably have
a really good sense of what is kind of current in terms of UX research trends.
So what would you say is the biggest change that you've seen over the last few years since
you guys have joined?
That's a good question.
I mean, I'll take COVID out because obviously that's been like, I don't know if I can take
it out, but obviously that's changed a lot of things in a number of ways, especially
in the last year or two.
The one that came to mind for me first is I feel like when we really started the podcast
and we were talking to people a few years back, there was a lot more concern or discussion
around how you kind of prove the ROI of research.
Like how do you try to quantify it and do that?
And I think there's been a little bit of a shift where there's like more acceptance or
belief that research is valuable in like these intangible and kind of difficult to measure
ways.
And so I've heard a little bit less of that from the people we speak to and more kind
of shifting towards like the practicality or the pragmatic side of like, well, then
how do we do research in a way that fits into our processes or, you know, has the right
turnaround time or is really focused on specific decisions and not just generalized type things.
So there's something there that I've seen a bit over the last few years.
I don't know, Erin, if you would agree.
I definitely agree.
I think, you know, when you think of the sort of maturity spectrum, it's certainly matured.
There's certainly more UX, more UX research happening, which means people are now talking
about research ops and research impact and not do we need this at all, but how do we
get more out of it?
So without a doubt, that's definitely happening.
I think another thing that's happening is just an emphasis on this because of COVID,
because of social justice issues and a lot of things happening in the world and, you
know, tech's undeniable importance and role in the world we live in.
There are a lot of overdue conversations happening about diversity, equity, inclusion, ethical
design that was not happening four years ago when I joined user interviews, but it is happening
a lot more now and you're starting to see real action come out of it.
So that's been great to see as well.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And actually thinking about that, you bring up an excellent point, which is that UX has
really evolved as a practice and as a field, not just in how we do design, but also in
how we run research and the fact that research is now valued in a much greater way.
But it is interesting to hear too, that you're seeing this trend toward inclusive research,
it sounds like.
So yeah.
Could you share a little bit about that?
Like what are some of the shifts that really helped to make research more inclusive?
Yeah.
Well, I think, you know, it's as with the sort of maturity of the field in general,
there's the awareness and then there's, right, there's this progression of, okay, I've recognized
that I have an issue or that there's something I need to do here.
Okay, now what am I going to do about it?
So I feel like we're at the stage where it's commonly known and recognized that there are
major gaps in terms of inclusion and accessibility, and that there are some great examples of
companies who are doing this really well, and there are now more and more apps and tools
that are making it easier to make your product more accessible.
So there's less and less of an excuse to not do it.
And I think also there's more of an emphasis on progress over perfection, right?
Like you're not going to get called out for doing an imperfect job of trying and that
advocates for accessibility and inclusion will recognize your positive attempts to do
better and not sort of call you out for being imperfect.
And so I think much as sort of agile and sprint and these kind of methodologies of just get
a little bit better all the time apply to how we build products, they also apply to
how we make our products more usable, more inclusive, more ethical.
Yeah, I think an interesting example comes to mind of something that we kind of did almost
as an experiment was, hey, when companies are running a lot of research on our platform,
we have all this data about who they're talking to, demographics, location, characteristics,
all these different things.
And we went out in kind of a very manual way to ask some of those teams, like, hey, if
we generate a report for you that kind of shows a breakdown of who your team's talking
to and if there's any trends or over indexing in certain areas so you can help correct that,
would that be useful?
And we got a really tremendous response from that.
So we haven't productized it yet, but just in terms of pulling those reports manually
and generating them for folks, there was a real strong positive reception to that in
a way that I don't know if a few years ago if we'd done that, if it would have landed
the same way.
That's awesome.
And I do think you guys are in a really unique position where you do have all that excellent
data, not just with one company, but with many companies who are using your platform
to basically recruit and organize and essentially execute the studies in many cases.
So I guess thinking about the way people are executing studies, I imagine, I know you mentioned
that we're kind of ruling out COVID, but what have you seen in terms of in-person versus
remote studies?
I know that for a while we couldn't even do in-person studies, but what are you seeing
nowadays?
It's coming back a bit.
I mean, we see that in our data, right?
So there was a period where when COVID really first happened in that February, March period,
at that time, probably maybe 40% of our projects, our sessions were for in-person studies.
And then as the two-week lockdown is going to fix everything phase came out, that basically
went away.
There were just none.
And we didn't really know what was going to happen, so it was kind of a scary time for
us as a business.
Is that going to shift online or not?
And what was interesting was you saw some people that were kind of staunchly against
remote research of, oh, you don't get the same camaraderie or rapport and you can't
go as deep.
Trying it out out of necessity.
And I think a lot of people have actually come to find that there are some benefits
to it and are probably going to stick with it as one of their tools going forward, even
if they do bring back in-person to some degree.
So I think lately it hasn't come back as strongly.
I think some of the advantages of remote in terms of being able to reach more geographies,
get things scheduled a little bit faster because you don't have to wait for somebody to travel
to your office or go to them or whatever the methodology requires.
And so, yeah, it's coming back, but it doesn't seem like it's going to come all the way back
to what it was before.
I don't know, Erin, if you have any other trends.
Yeah, I think that's right.
I think that's right with all things COVID where we were forced into remote basically
everything.
And a lot of people realize the advantages of that who maybe hadn't explored remote research
as much before, but now we're in a period of now there is more choice.
Obviously, things are not back to where they were in terms of everything being fully open
and fully safe and whatnot, but there's more option than there was when everything was
remote and everyone's just reevaluating everything.
What has served us well about this remote thing we were forced into, what have we missed
by not being able to test our physical products together in person?
There are cases where it's obviously much more important to have that option.
And another thing I'll tell you, I heard this from a researcher, which is, I won't say who
it was, but I wonder how much this happens in the market as well, where many companies
have invested in very expensive labs for in-person and there's a feeling of, we got the budget
for this, we need to use it.
And so I don't know how much that happens, but I know that things like that do happen
too, where you want to make use of the budget and of the decisions you've already made for
in-person.
So I think there's a recalibration for sure happening and my assumption is that remote
will remain a larger percentage than it was before the pandemic, but less than it was
when it was the only option.
You do see people doing really cool and clever things like, you know, ingenuity certainly
comes out of stuff like this, like companies that are doing some physical products, shipping
stuff to people so that they can have it in their hands while they're talking to them
remotely or people working on mobile apps, having people do the kind of like bear hug
the laptop thing so that your screen is in front of the webcam and they don't have to
install any other software, they can still just hop onto Zoom in their laptop and then
hold their phone in a certain way so that you can see what they're doing and how they
use apps.
So people are really clever, so that's been cool to see as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I guess with a pandemic, we are all inevitably challenged to work within some of these constraints
and still try to gather data so that we can make informed decisions about whatever it
is we're designing.
But I'm curious why this shift toward remote, like what about this shift to remote seems
like it'll be something that'll stick around for good?
Well we're in the recruiting business, right?
We help people find the very best participants that meet whatever needs they might have.
And remote just makes finding the participants you need so much more within reach, depending
on what you're looking for.
But if you take the geographic constraints out of it, it just means now you can talk
to anyone in the world, anyone in the country who, depending on what you're looking for,
maybe you have very specific criteria that are non-geographic in nature, now you can
talk to all of those folks.
Now you can get a wider swath of people to talk to, right?
If you're building an app that's designed for every English speaker in the world, and
you're only talking to people who live in New York because that's where your company
is based, you're not getting a good sampling of whatever biases or whatever usability issues,
whatever it might be that are in your product because you're only talking to people who
live in New York who are wonderful people, I'm from New York, but are not necessarily
representative of every English speaker in the entire world.
Good save there, fellow New Yorker up here.
Yes, represent.
Why do all our participants talk so fast?
The things I would add maybe just quickly are, I think some of the other advantages,
you mentioned the lab stuff, Erin, is if you're doing it remotely, you can just record the
video as long as you get consent and people are okay with that, and now you can just splice
it up and you have these great artifacts.
You have the person there saying it in their own words, where to do that in a lab setting
is a little bit more involved in terms of how you set up the camera and audio and everything
else.
I think that's just simpler and more accessible for lots of teams.
I think incentive-wise, obviously you still want to pay people a fair incentive and value
their time, but when you're doing it remotely, you're not baking in the time that they have
to travel to get to your office both ways, and so if you're talking to them for an hour,
you can just incentivize them for that hour.
You don't have to pad it a little bit because they have to leave their work day in the middle
of the day and come down for a half hour in transit, talk to you, and then get back to
their job.
You're going to have to pay more to do that for in person, and so you can do a little
bit more with your budget.
You get, I think, these better artifacts in some ways if you're using the recording tool.
Some of those things, I think, are real advantages, and I think what people were afraid of was
that, oh, it's going to be awkward.
I'm not going to be able to have the same level of connection.
I'm not going to be able to get people to open up or share, and I think being forced
to do it, I think a lot of people found like, oh, we can still develop good conversational
techniques such that these online sessions feel really productive.
Yeah, and people are used to Zoom now.
It used to be we would have researchers complain a lot more about this participant.
They don't know how to use Zoom.
That doesn't happen as much anymore.
Everyone knows how to use Zoom now, so just the comfort with using these remote tools
has gone way up, so it's just easier to use them.
No-show rates tend to be better.
It's easy to join.
It's easy to find a replacement in the last minute when you're doing remote, so it's just
easier.
That being said, it's not always the best way to go, but it does make life a whole lot
easier.
The other thing that surprised me, I heard a researcher say is you think if you're doing,
let's say, field ethnography kind of research or having someone come into your lab, you
have someone come into the lab, they're obviously not in their natural context, but if you're
talking to them where they live, where they reside, yes, maybe it's a little invasive,
but they are in their natural habitat, and you might get more authentic and natural sort
of insight that way, which is a nice kind of benefit as well.
So we're a remote company.
We are into remote, so definitely think there's tons of pros to remote research.
Yeah, the other thing that comes to mind with just the whole pandemic dynamic with research
is we definitely heard from researchers that they've had to bring a little bit more empathy
or understanding to the conversations just because everyone is so kind of shot and burnt
out from the whole thing of I don't have childcare, I'm stuck in my house, I'm worried about my
loved ones.
There's just been a ton of stress and a lot of disruption for everyone, and so when you're
talking to somebody, even something about something maybe typically casual, like some
consumer app or something that is low stakes, you're going to these sessions and people
are just happy to have somebody to talk to and kind of offloading some of that stress
or venting a little bit, and so there's a little bit of meeting people there and being
supportive of it, but then also on the researcher side, taking some time for yourself to recover
and not kind of absorbing all that trauma and stuff and making sure you have some of
your own self-care.
So we've definitely heard that type of trend from researchers as well.
Yeah, totally.
And I do think the ability to take a breather is something that I always recommend whenever
I'm talking to other researchers who are like, how much time should I dedicate?
And it ends up being like, oh, well, we got hour-long interviews, so we can just stack
them all in.
Like, well, you might want to have at least a solid 15, 30 minutes, at a minimum 15, more
like 30 minutes in between, just gather yourself because it can be a really intense session,
whether that's usability testing or interviews.
So absolutely agree, yeah.
So when thinking about what has changed versus what has stayed the same, what do you think
has kind of not changed in a remarkable way or an unremarkable way?
Well, the fundamentals haven't changed, right?
Good research starts with good research questions, followed by a good research design, good recruiting,
good moderation, good execution, good analysis, all that.
None of that's changed.
So that's what comes to mind, I guess, for me first.
The fundamentals have not changed.
They've become more accessible.
That would be a difference.
I think there's so many more communities, education, content, particularly with remote,
that have made it more accessible to get those fundamentals right, but the fundamentals haven't
changed.
Yeah, my mind went to the same place of just like, you still need to make sure you're doing
research for the right reasons and you have a clear question or decision you're trying
to make.
You still got to talk to great people so that you're learning the right things from a representative
sample.
Yeah, I think the way you described Aaron was pretty spot on.
Yeah, and that idea of having the right reason to do research, I can even think of a couple
times where others have come up to be asking, what's the appropriate method if someone wants
to get feedback about an application or about a website?
And sometimes I get asked, is an interview a good method for that?
And it's like, well, if you're going to talk about something that people aren't looking
at and using, then it might not actually end up being an objective observation or it might
not necessarily be the most helpful feedback.
But if you were to maybe do a usability study or do some more direct observation, then maybe
you'll learn a bit more.
So I totally agree.
I think the fundamentals of figuring out what it is you want to learn and then structuring
your study in a way that helps you to really answer those questions, even if it means what
you ultimately ask isn't the same question, structuring your interview or your interview
questions or your tasks in a way that allows you to really get at the truth.
I think that's absolutely, yeah, still the same and holds true no matter what, a timeless
practice.
Yeah, it truly is.
I don't think that will ever change.
The methods will change, the speed will change, the details will all change, but the fundamentals
won't change.
Yeah, and I think it's a lot of the fundamentals, like the upfront fundamentals, like what is
the question we're trying to answer?
What is the best methodology for that?
Who needs to be involved?
Is there a timeline where we can get this done such that it's going to impact the decisions
that other teams are making or we're going to miss the boat?
I do think a lot of that upfront planning, which doesn't mean it has to take a long time
or you have to do it way in advance, but getting a couple of those things right from the start
puts you on the right trajectory, otherwise you really drift off, you know what I mean?
If you're thinking about an arrow going off in space, if at the start it's a little couple
degrees off, it seems close, but then you go forward a little bit and it's veered way
off.
It's like that type of thing.
Yeah, absolutely.
I guess related, if we're thinking about some of the mistakes or maybe some of the pitfalls
that researchers may be making, maybe that's planning the study or running the study, personally,
I've seen a lot of mistakes can be avoided if there's good planning, but I'm curious
what you've seen.
I think, just to not hit the planning stuff since we were just doing that a little bit,
we can come back to that, but I think when people are in the studies, sometimes not having
the right level of flexibility or responding to change in a way that they should.
If you're doing a usability study and you're showing a new prototype or something to people
and giving them a task to complete, and the first two or three people are bombing it and
it's not even close and you were planning to talk to six or seven, you probably should
make some changes mid-study before you talk to the rest of the people.
Sometimes people don't do that because it's like, well, we said we're going to talk to
seven people for this and we got four more to go, so let's do it.
Or being really strict on a script of questions and not having a little bit of improv and
space to explore the interesting things that are coming up.
So I think in the study, sometimes people can be rigid in ways that's counterproductive.
Yeah, and I think we're lucky to get a lot of newer researchers and people starting out
using user interviews, hopefully because we've made it easy to get started and that sort
of thing.
But we do get folks who will launch a recruiting project and then talk to our support folks
and say, now how do I do this research?
So I would just say, A, we have lots of great resources and as does NNG on how to do great
research in their wonderful communities and Google just launched a Coursera course on
UX, tons of great resources to figure out how to do research.
But recruiting is a great place to go wrong, I would say.
Many researchers get it right, certainly, but you will not get good insight from bad
fit participants.
You just won't.
And depending on what you're trying to learn and how niche your product is, the specificity
that you need from those participants may vary widely, but depending on if you're doing
discovery or usability, depending on lots of different things, what you really need
will vary.
But if you're not talking to the right participants, you're not going to get good insights.
And I think there are definitely researchers out there that don't spend enough time thinking
about who is the person that's going to have the insight that I need to learn something
and how do I go find them.
Another lesson that comes to mind that I learned early in my career, the hard way, I was a
recent college grad and setting up to do an unmoderated usability study through an online
tool and built out the whole thing and all these different prompts and stuff and I was
really excited about it.
And so I just fired away and I was like, I got to make it 10 people to do this.
And I got 10 people to do it really quick and I went through those and I had messed
something up in the first prompt and so it didn't make sense and everyone misinterpreted
it.
And every single one was bad.
And there was a UX researcher on the team at the time, Kirk, shout out Kirk, if you're
listening to this, who told me afterwards, he's like, you got to test the test.
You have to, you got to QA it, you got to make sure that the thing you're doing is actually
going to work, whether that's with one external participant to start or have somebody internally
do it or come to it with fresh eyes yourself.
In just my excitement to get rolling, I just fired away and it totally didn't work as a
result.
Yeah.
Oh my gosh, I totally agree.
And I do have to say, having used your platform a couple of times, you guys do make it really
easy to figure out who's a good fit and who isn't.
And I do think that's a really fundamental first step to talk to your point, Erin.
And especially when you do have, for example, I had one project fairly recently where there
was a huge variety of people I needed to interview and it was a lot, but it was also important
for me to get a couple of people in this particular role, a couple of people in that particular
role.
And if I hadn't spent about four to eight weeks just on ensuring I had the right kinds
of people, I think I wouldn't have gotten the richness of insights I needed.
But yeah, JH, to your point also, that pilot, and I actually did have a little pilot session
where I basically ran the study with two people or I ran the interview with two people.
And in that interview, I figured out a whole bunch of like, oh yeah, that's not worded
well.
But this needs to be, we need to prioritize these questions better.
So we really need to refine this.
So absolutely, that pilot study is going to make things a lot easier for the rest of the
study.
And I do think it's a good way to be like iterative about your research practice.
So yeah, excellent points.
And you can also test the tests often yourself or with a coworker.
It doesn't even have to be with real participants you've recruited a lot of times.
It's just silly mistakes you didn't catch or things like that.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Now I guess I'm curious now, looking into the next year, what do you think researchers
should be mindful of as they are refining their practice?
Maybe there's stuff that maybe new folks should consider, some stuff that maybe more UX research
mature folks could consider.
Could you offer some advice for folks looking into the new year?
Yeah, I think there's something for folks.
If you are embracing online research in whatever form you're doing it, but let's think about
some sort of video, whether it's moderated or unmoderated, and you're recording it and
getting those artifacts, definitely would encourage people to look into all the great
tools that have emerged around how you can splice those up and atomicize them and get
all these different insights for future use.
And so I think there's a wide selection of tools across some of the research repository
tools.
Some of the video tools themselves offer this stuff.
There's other ones that work with any video tool, like Grain.
But being able to chop up those highlights in an easy way is really helpful.
And I just know for myself, two years ago when I was doing some of this with people
on my team, we were downloading stuff, we were trying to do it in QuickTime, we were
messing with an iMovie, and it just felt like a burden.
And now there's things in my browser, I'm just dragging stuff around and I have a whole
thing processed in like 15 minutes and it's crazy.
So if you're not using those tools, I would strongly recommend taking a look at them.
Yeah, absolutely.
And actually, you bring up a great point.
Like I've seen a lot of research done where there are these excellent artifacts where
you got participants who consent to have their video recorded, and they understand that it's
going to be used internally.
And once we've got that consent, we've got essentially a goldmine of information that
kind of sits unused in a lot of organizations.
Like maybe we write about it in a short research deliverable, but I often find the best way
to get buy-in for research is to actually show people the clips, like show people what
people are saying.
And it doesn't have to be the entire interview or the entire usability test.
It could be a 15-second snapshot or a one-minute snapshot or basically a short clip of what
actually happened there.
So totally agree.
Yeah, 100%.
I think in terms of advice, I'm always, I don't like to give advice, I'm just a person
trying my best over here, but here I go.
I think with the great resignation and with it being, who knows, the economies, all sorts
of stuff's happening.
I just read my New York Times said like the worst inflation in a generation, and I don't
know what the Fed's going to do and interest rates, and I don't know what's going to happen.
I'm not going to predict that.
But right now it is a laborer's market and it's a good time to be, if you're in a position
to do so, to be demanding conditions that make you happy at work, whether that is salary
or benefits, whether that is standing up for something you believe in, in the ethics front,
whether it's more tooling and resources, whatever it might be.
If you have experience and talent and care and drive, I mean, it is a good time to find
a good job for yourself.
So I would say seize the moment, seize the zeitgeist and do your best work.
It's a good time to do it.
Yeah.
And to that point too, if you are maybe crafting your current role, I think we're in a great
position now where we can essentially work to create the lifestyles that we want to have.
And I do think our field is unique in that we are often capable of doing it at home and
to continue doing it at home.
But I'm also thinking too, just thinking about what you mentioned earlier about inclusive
research.
Now we're going to be talking to people all over the world with remote studies, and I
think that's great.
But it also means that we're probably going to be working weird hours because we're doing
interviews with people in the Philippines, people in Europe, and that means working strange
hours.
But we don't have to work long hours if we work strange hours.
And I do think basically it's important to defend your boundaries and keep yourself sane.
And really, when I say practice self-care, I mean, take care of yourself and do make
sure that you're working in a sustainable way.
So totally agree.
Yeah.
And I'm glad that you brought up self-care because we had Vivian Castillo on the show
a while ago, and she's really advocated for this.
And I think we've also moved the dialogue forward on self-care where I think it used
to be go to the spa and get a massage, that kind of thing.
Nothing wrong with any of that, of course, but really it's about creating boundaries.
It's about saying no, about saying this is what I need to not get burned out and to bring
my full self to work and all of that.
And I think that's where we are in the self-care conversation, which is great.
That ought to be hopefully accessible to a lot of people to create better boundaries
for themselves.
And to your point, maybe I'm working weird hours, maybe I don't need to do that every
day.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think when you are in a remote role for yourself working that way, I say this to my
team a lot, but I think there's two ways of doing it.
There's basic mode where you do nine to five and you figure out some ways to set boundaries
there.
So you work in a different place of your house or you take your slippers off or you do something
to demarcate the day and try to hold yourself to that and turn off.
But I think there's also the advanced mode where what you're describing, where you can
get into working strange hours out of necessity because you need to talk to somebody in different
location or it works better with your life that day and you have that flexibility now.
And I have found that you've got to be mindful of the total amount you're working and boundaries
and stuff.
But I really like that version.
I was up early this morning because my kids were up and got an hour of work done from
like seven to eight.
And then I started my day late so I could go out for a run when the sun was up and other
days I wrap up early and then I'll close out my inbox while I watch a TV show at the end
of the night.
And so I like that flexibility, but it can be a slippery slope if you're not good about
being mindful about how much you're working and keeping a balanced ledger, so to speak.
Yeah, sometimes you got to set up boundaries for yourself.
Absolutely.
Well, this has been fun and inspiring and I think I learned a lot both about what the
current state of research is as well as what's really going to take research to the next
level in the year forward and maybe years to come.
So yeah, thanks for being here with us today.
If you do have social media channels or other places you could point people to, obviously
I know there's the Awkward Silences podcast, but please, yeah, share if there's any places
that our audience could follow your work.
Yeah, absolutely.
So we are at User Interviews on Twitter.
JH, what's your Twitter handle?
JH Forster.
Cool.
I'm at Erin H. May, we're User Interviews, we're on Facebook, we're on LinkedIn, and
if you check out User Interviews slash Awkward, you can get three free participants there
if that's of interest.
So check us out.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I got to say it has been so fun to work with you guys, both on this podcast and outside
of it.
But yeah, it has been an absolute pleasure.
Thank you guys for your time and I hope you have a great rest of your day.
Thanks for having us.
Thanks for having us.
That was Erin and JH from Awkward Silences by User Interviews.
As they mentioned, there are loads of resources both on the User Interviews website and on
the Nielsen Norman Group website.
And in fact, I just published an article on how to recruit and screen research participants,
which I've linked in the show notes.
So if you're about to embark on a research study and you don't know where to start, check
out the links in our show notes.
Also, we have a virtual five-day qualitative research series running from April 4th to
8th, where you can sharpen your qualitative research skills.
Or if the two half-day format is more your cup of tea, then our next conference is January
8th through 21.
To find articles, videos, and learning opportunities like these, check out nngroup.com.
That's N-N-G-R-O-U-P dot com.
This episode was produced and hosted by me, Therese Fessenden, and all editing and post-production
is by Jonas Zellner.
But most importantly, these episodes are only possible with your support.
So if you want to continue to support us and the work that we do, please hit subscribe.
And if you can, please leave a rating on Apple Podcasts.
Thank you so much for listening today, and we wish you a belated Happy New Year.
Until next time, remember, keep it simple.