17. User Research Trends: What's Changed and What Hasn't (feat. Erin May and JH Forster, hosts of Awkward Silences)
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This is the Nielsen Norman Group UX Podcast. I'm Therese 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 Erin 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, and

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 Erin May and JH Forrester. All right, well, thanks for joining us. We've got Erin 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, you know, I think is great. So that said, though, you're more than podcast guests. And I think it's important, you know, to share your

what you do and like the important roles that you currently play at user interviews. Yeah, you want me to jump in here? I can take it. So I'm, I'm JH, I head up the product team 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 of 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. I mean, naturally, the brand is very much research. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And 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, you know, 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

What would you say is the biggest change that you've seen over the last few years since you guys have joined? It'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, you know, a few years back,

there's 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

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 techs

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 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 help 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 kinds 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, you know, demographics, location, characteristics, all these different things. And we went out and kind of, you know, very...

manual way to ask some of those teams, like, hey, if we generate a report for you, it kind of shows a breakdown of like who your team's talking to. And if there's any, you know, trends or over indexing in certain areas, like, you know, so you can help correct that, like, would that be useful? And we got a really tremendous response from that. So we haven't like productized it yet. But just in terms of like pulling those reports manually and generating them for folks, there was like a real strong positive reception to that in a way that, you know, 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 like 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

What have you seen in terms of, you know, 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, you know, in that February, March period, at that time, probably like maybe 40% of our projects, our sessions were for in-person studies.

And then, you know, as the two week lockdown is going to fix everything phase came out, you know, that basically went away. Like 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. Like, is that going to shift to online or not? And yeah,

And what was interesting was, you know, you saw some people that were kind of staunchly against, you know, remote research of, oh, you don't get the same, you know, camaraderie or rapport and you can't go as deep, you know, trying it out out of necessity. And I think a lot of people have actually come to find there are some benefits to it. And they're probably going to stick with it as one of their tools going forward, even if they do bring back in person, you know, 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 realized 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 there's more option than there was when everything was remote. And everyone's just reevaluating everything, right? Like,

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

You know, 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, you know. And so I don't know how much that happens, but I know that things like that do happen to where you want to make use of the budget and of the decisions you've already made.

Made for in person. So, you know, 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, you know, when it was only option.

Yeah. You do see people doing really cool and clever things like, you know, ingenuity certainly comes out of stuff like this. Like, you know, companies that are doing some physical products, you know, shipping stuff to people so that they can have it in their hands while they're talking to them remotely. Or, you know, 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. They don't have to install any other software. They can still just, you know, 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. Like people, you know, 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, you know, depending on what you're looking for. But if you take the geographic constraints out of it, it's...

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 not 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. So good save there. Why do all our participants talk so fast? The things I would add maybe just quickly are, I think some of the other advantages, like you mentioned the lab stuff, Erin, is if you're doing it remotely, like

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.

So I think that's just like simpler and more accessible for lots of teams. I think incentive wise, like 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 like the time that they have to travel to get to your office like both ways. And so, you know, if you're talking to them for an hour, you can kind of just incentivize them for that hour. You don't have to, you know, pad it a little bit because they have to, you know, leave their work day in the middle of the day and come down for a half hour.

you know, in transit, talk to you and then get back to their job, right? So 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 like, I think these better artifacts in some ways, if you're using the recording tool. So some of those things, I think are real advantages. And I think what people were afraid of was that like, oh, it's gonna be awkward, I'm not gonna 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, you know, being forced to do it, I think people, a lot of people found like, oh, we can we can still develop good conversational techniques such that these online sessions feel, you know, really productive.

Yeah, and people are used to Zoom now. You know, it used to be we would, you know, have researchers complain a lot more about, you know, this participant, they don't know how to use Zoom. They don't, that doesn't happen as much anymore. Everyone knows how to use Zoom now. So just the sort of 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 environment.

context. But if you're talking to them where they live, where they reside, yes, like 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, you know, 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 like 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, you know, I'm worried about my loved ones, like 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 like

typically casual, like some consumer app or something that is, you know, low stakes, you're going to these sessions and people are like, just happy to have somebody to talk to and kind of offloading some of that stress or venting a little bit. And so, you know, 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 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. And I'm like, well, you might want to have at least a solid 15, 30 minutes, at a minimum 15, more like 30 minutes in between to 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 not changed in a remarkable way or an unremarkable way? Well, the fundamentals haven't changed. 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 just, 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 you're learning the right things from representative sample. Yeah, I think the way you described Aaron was pretty spot on.

Yeah. And that idea of, you know, having the right reason to do research, like I can even think of a couple of times where others are, you know, have come up to be asking what's the appropriate method if someone wants to get feedback about like an application or about a website. And sometimes I get asked, like, 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, you know, it might not actually end up being a

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

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, you know, structuring your interview or your interview questions or your tasks differently.

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 it's a lot of i think it's a lot of the fundamental like the upfront fundamentals like you know what is the question we're trying to answer what is the best methodology for that who needs to be involved you know is there a timeline where like we can get this done such that it's going to impact the decisions that other teams are making or you know we're going to miss the boat like 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 like getting a couple of those things right from the start like puts you on the right trajectory otherwise like you really drift off you know what i mean so like if you're

thinking about like an arrow going off in space. If at the start it's a little couple degrees off, it seems close, but then like you go forward a little bit and it's veered way off. It's like that type of thing. Yeah, absolutely. So I guess related, you know, if we're thinking about some of the mistakes or maybe some of the pitfalls that

researchers may be making, you know, maybe that's planning the study or running the study. I mean, personally, I've seen a lot of mistakes can be avoided if there's good planning, but I'm curious, like what you've seen. I think, um, you know, just to not hit the planning stuff, since we were just doing that a little bit, we can come back to that. But, um, I think when people are in the studies, sometimes not having like the right level of flexibility, um,

Or responding to change in a way that they should, right? 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. And 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 like improv and space to explore interesting things that are coming up. So I think like in the study, sometimes people can be rigid in ways that's counterproductive. Yeah. And I think, you know, we're lucky to get a lot of

kind 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 kind of will, you know, launch a recruiting project and then talk to our support folks and say, now, how do I do this research? So, you know, 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. And not...

many researchers get it right, certainly, but you, you will not get good insight from bad fit participants. You just won't. And, um, depending on what you're trying to learn and how niche your product is, uh, the specificity that you need, uh, from those participants may vary widely, but, um, and depending on if you're doing a discovery or usability, depending on lots of different things, what you really need will vary. But, uh,

if you're not talking to the right participants, you're not going to get good insights. And I, you know, I think there are definitely researchers out there that don't,

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. Yeah. Another lesson that comes to mind that I learned early in my career, kind of 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 like the first prompt. And so it didn't make sense and everyone misinterpreted it. And like 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. Like you have to like, you got to QA it. You got to make sure that, you know, the thing you're doing is actually going to work. Whether that's with one external participant to start or, you know, have somebody internally do it or come to it with fresh eyes yourself. And, you know, in just my excitement to get rolling, I just like, you know, fired away and it like totally didn't work as a result. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. I totally agree. And I do have to say, having used your platform a couple 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 kind of talk to your point, Erin. Yeah.

And, you know, especially when you do have like, for example, I had one project fairly recently where there was like a huge variety of people I needed to interview. And it was a lot. But, you know, it was also important for me to get, you know, a couple people in this particular role, a couple people in that particular role. And if I hadn't spent...

you know, 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 like 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, Ooh, yeah, that's not worded well, or this, this needs to be, we need to prioritize these questions better. So we really need to refine this. So, so absolutely that pilot study is going to make things a lot easier for the rest of the study. And

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, 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 like would encourage people to look into all the great tools that have emerged around how you can like splice those up and, you know, atomize them and get all these different insights for future use. And so I think there's like 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 kind of like work with any video tool like grain, but being able to like chop up those highlights in an easy way is, is really helpful. And I just know for myself, like 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 quick time. We were messing with iMovie. And it was like, it just felt like a burden. And now there's things like in my browser, I'm just like dragging stuff around and I have like 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 gold mine 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 organization.

interview or the entire usability test. It could be a 15 second snapshot or 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. Um,

I think, you know, with the great resignation and with it being, you know, who knows, the economy's, all sorts of stuff's happening. I just read my New York Times said, like, the worst inflation in a generation. Oh, yeah. 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 labor's market. And it is a...

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, you know, do your best work. It's a good time to do it. Yeah. And to that point too, if you are, you know, maybe crafting your current role, right? Like 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, like,

Just thinking about what you mentioned earlier about inclusive research, right? 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, right? Because we're doing interviews with people in the Philippines, people in Europe, and

And that means working strange hours, but we don't have to work long hours if we work strange hours. And I do think there's an important, 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.

saying no about saying this is what I need to not get burnt 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 like in a remote role, like for yourself working that way, I say this to my team a lot. Like, I think there's kind of two ways of doing it. There's kind of like basic mode where you do nine to five and you figure out some ways to set boundaries there. So, you know, you work in a different place of your house or, you know, you take your slippers off or, you know, you do something right to like demarcate the day and try to hold yourself to that and turn off. But I think there's also kind of like the advanced mode where kind of what you're describing where

You can get into working strange hours out of necessity because, you know, you need to talk to somebody in different location or it works better with your life that day. And like you have that flexibility now. And I have found that it's, you know, it's you got to be mindful of like the total amount you're working and boundaries and stuff. But I really like that version. Like I was up early this morning because my kids were up and

got a hour of work done from like seven to eight. And then I kind of 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. Yeah.

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, you know, 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.

being here with us today. Do you 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, you know, 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 gotta 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.