2 - Recruitment
Identifying your users
For government services, users can come from many places. Therefore, it may be hard to narrow down a target group of users to test.
A great way to start would be to refer back to your defined topic and ask who will most likely use these services? Few key considerations to consider when identifying users include:
- Service experience: How familiar is the user with how to use the website, application, and/or product/service?
- Domain experience: How knowledgeable is the user about this content?
- Diversity: Overall, is the mix of people you are speaking to a reflection of the diversity one might see in the overall population?
Finding users
Depending on who your target audience is, there will be multiple ways to recruit users. Consider what is most suitable and relevant for your study.
For guidance on who your users are, you may refer to preparation prior to user research.
You may recruit users from:
- existing clients from government organizations (such as the Ontario Public Service)
- stakeholder connections
- meetup groups
- social networks
- people in public spaces such as university campuses, libraries, parks, etc.
- people visiting public service offices on-site
- community service groups and non-profit organizations
Remember it is very common that if you're conducting a research session, where users have to come to you, that some users will drop out or be unable to make that session, so make sure you factor this in to your recruitment and where possible avoid only recruiting the bare minimum of users.
