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How to recruit users with no budget
Addressing the other half of user research.
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Moen, the faucet and showerhead company, was stuck. They realized that they didn’t know much about how people shower or what they look for in a showerhead, and so they partnered with another company, Qualidata, to recruit users to figure this out.
The problem was: showers were a private activity for most people. If they asked people what they were looking for in a normal interview, they might have gotten an idealized experience rather than actual user needs.
So Qualidata came up with an ingenious solution. They recruited a group of users who didn’t mind making this private experience public: nudists.
With participant’s permission, they installed cameras in their showers to watch what problems arose when showering. With that data, Moen designed one of the best-selling showerheads, the Revolution, that won many awards.
User research is not the only place where unique challenges can sometimes arise: recruiting users can often yield challenges that require serious consideration.
So how do you do it?