ATRC guidelines for finding testing participants
Guidelines for writing a call-out for participants at the ATRC
- Briefly describe the demonstration software you will be testing, and the some of the tasks users will be doing. This will influence who can participate: not everyone can participate if only paper prototypes are used in your particular round of testing
- Pass on the electronic version of this description to the ATRC so they can contact people by email.
- Mention what kind of compensation you will be providing volunteers. It can be a $5 coffee card, but that's less likely to attract busy students, teachers, and university staff! The ATRC often hires people to do testing pays $25/hour for testing - try and find money in your budget and you are more likely to find participants.
- Have your location for testing secured
- Determine what kind of assistive technologies's you want to test with & the number of users you want to test with.
- Ethics: update consent forms used by the Fluid project if needed http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/User+Testing+Consent+Form
Sample call-out letter
Hello,
I'm (your name) with the Fluid Project. The Fluid Project is an open, collaborative project to improve the user experience of community source software. Fluid components are reusable, web-based user interfaces.
We are looking for ways to improve the user experience of some of our components. We will be conducting accessibility testing with people who use assistive technologies on our (component name(s)) component(s). We are looking for 3 participants.
Some of the tasks users will be doing are:
- (describe some of the tasks)
- completing a brief demographic questionnaire, post-test questionnaire, and consent form
- selecting files from the Desktop of a PC and uploading them to an image gallery on a web page
- selecting and moving widgets on a homepage
We would like to conduct this testing on (date) from (starttime) to (endtime) at the ATRC Resource Center in Robarts Libary (location details). Testing will take approximately 30 - 45 minutes. Participants will be reimbursed $25 for their time and travel costs. Participants can bring their own computers and assistive technologies or can use the equuipment at the ATRC.
If you are interested in participating or if you have any questions, please contact me at: (contact info).
Thanks,
(your name)