Compensation

What

Offering usability test or user research participants compensation to encourage participation and to thank them for their time.

Why

Compensating participants for sharing their time and lived experience with your team often results in a more diverse, representative set of participants. Without compensation, you often end up recruiting people with a strong intrinsic interest in your website. These people may not have the same needs and experiences as a less interested pool of users. With compensation, you can encourage less interested, more representative people to participate.

How to do it

Figure out what’s legal and appropriate. Consult your agency’s Office of General Counsel on options for providing compensation to encourage participation in usability testing, consistent with your agency’s authorities. The options will depend upon your agency’s authorities and the specific facts.
Consider contracting for a recruiting service to help you get an effective research pool.
If compensation is allowed, clearly communicate when and how participants will receive compensation. In the emails, postings, or other materials you use to recruit your participants, describe the compensation and how participants will receive it (via mail, pick up at an office, etc.). This is particularly important for “remote” research.

Example

Compensating research participants — TTS Handbook

Considerations for use in government

No PRA implications. Even when users are present, the PRA explicitly exempts direct observation and non-standardized conversation, 5 CFR 1320.3(h)3.

If you are not working with government employees, you will need to observe standard precautions for archiving personally identifiable information.

Privacy

What

Designers potentially might work with many different categories of information, across a number of different contexts. You have an obligation to steward information in a way that respects privacy.

Why

Designers have an obligation to respect and protect privacy. People will not honestly participate in design processes, nor make use of products and services, they do not trust.

How to do it

Familiarize yourself with the Fair Information Practice Principles, a set of precepts at the heart of the U.S. Privacy Act of 1974.
Consult your organization’s privacy office, which may include your general counsel, if you plan to substantially make use of information that could potentially identify specific individuals.
Inform and collect the voluntary consent of anyone who participates in moderated design research. Ensure that all unmoderated forms of research (for example, web analytics) are covered by an easy-to-access privacy policy.
Pay special attention to all categories of information used throughout the design process. Note contexts in which it’s not okay to share certain categories of information.

Additional resources

Considerations for use in government

The government’s use of information about people is subject to a number of laws and policies, including: the Privacy Act of 1974, the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002, and the eGovernment Act of 2002.

Conduct a Privacy Threshold Analysis in collaboration your agency’s privacy office whenever a design calls for the creation of a new data store (for example, a database).

Ensure all collections of personally identifiable information (PII) are accompanied by a Privacy Act Notice. See, for example, GSA’s Privacy Act Notice for Design Research.

Recruiting

What

Identifying and gathering people to interview or who will test your product.

Why

Recruiting people who represent your core user group is a critical and oft-overlooked part of research. Time spent with the right people using the wrong methods is better than time spent with people who aren’t your core users while using the right methods.

How to do it

Seek out people who

Are trying to use the thing you are working on right at that very moment.
Recently tried to use the thing you are working on.
Used the thing you are working on less recently.
Have used something like what you are working on, and are likely to use what you are working on.

Reach them through

Relevant community organizations.
Impromptu requests in or near the relevant environment.
Your personal and professional network.
The new or existing website.
Existing mailing lists.

Additional resources

Example design research participant agreement / Ejemplo de acuerdo de participante de investigación de diseño

Considerations for use in government

No PRA implications. No information is collected from members of the public.