Wikimedia Research/Design Research/Participant recruiting

Wikimedia Foundation Design Research Recruitment Process

Step 1. Researcher completes the Recruiting Request Form

The recruiting request form collects the information needed to start the recruit. If you need access to the form, please contact sbecker@wikimedia.org.

Step 2. Initial Outreach to Participants

We send out an invite, typically via email, to people in some of the following ways:

• participant database - these are people who have opted-in to be contacted about design research projects
• specific email lists for targeted user studies
• CSV list pulls for targeted participant types

Step 3. Pre-Research Notes

Step 3a. Confirmation Email 

Once people respond that they would like to participate, we send a note to confirm the time/date of their session, as well as provide information about what will happen in the research session.

Step 3b. Research Release Form

In this step, we also provide the research release form that participants sign before participating.

Step 3c. Calendar Invite

Using the Design Research Calendar, we send a calendar invite to the participant, researcher/s, and reserve a room in San Francisco, CA.

Step 4. Update Research Notes Page

For each research session, we have a spreadsheet that contains the protocol for the research session (to ensure we cover all the content required for the research at hand) as well as some basic information about the participant. After all the research sessions are completed for the project, this spreadsheet along with the recordings of the sessions and any other resulting artifacts are used in analysis and synthesis.