Blog, industry news, tips and updates from Participant Kit

graphic showing Consent Kit on one side and Participant Kit on the other representing the name change

Consent Kit is now Participant Kit

After six years as Consent Kit, we're changing our name to Participant Kit. Here's why we've outgrown our old name and what it means for the future of the platform.

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Ben Aldred

Panel management software - Best panel management tools for user research.

Tools | Research Ops

7 Best Panel Management Tools for UX Research

Panel management software is a tool to use when you need to build highly targeted research panels, streamline repetitive admin tasks, and get better results from your studies.

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Ben Aldred

Research Recruitment | Customer Success

How Participant Kit Helped Nile Achieve Accessibility as a Standard

"It’s all very well being an inclusive design practice — but if your participant journey is not inclusive, you’re actively excluding. Participant Kit is key to making sure our participant management processes are as inclusive as possible."

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Ben Aldred

Research Recruitment

How To Carry Out Research Recruitment On A Budget

We don’t all have the dreamy budgets of Apple and Google to carry out UX recruitment and research (sadly!). But there are a few different participant recruiting strategies you can use that can help you get the job done if you’re looking for budget-conscious methods.

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Ben Aldred

A hand holding a snowball. Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash.

Research Recruitment

The Benefits Of Snowball Sampling [+ Examples]

Most UX research studies can be effectively carried out using simple recruiting strategies which will yield enough consenting participants to meet the criteria for a study.

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Ben Aldred

Fundamentals | Research Recruitment

Why informed consent needs inclusive design

Participant Kit helps organisations do inclusive research and manage participants’ data responsibly.

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Jo Schofield

Research Recruitment

How To Reduce Unconscious Recruitment Bias In User Research

We all have explicit and implicit biases that shape every aspect of our lives, and which affect the lives of other people we interact with — whether that’s our kids, our colleagues, or our research participants.

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Ben Aldred

Research Recruitment

A Starter Guide To Recruiting Users For Usability Testing

Usability testing is one of the best ways for UX researchers to see and understand how people really interact with your apps, product, or service. No matter how well you think you know your users, this type of testing always proves that there are still new things to learn at every stage of product development.

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Ben Aldred

Tools

The 6 Best User Research Scheduling Tools For 2023

Even the best laid UX research plans can go astray when you’re scheduling user research sessions. If you don’t have a fast, simple way for participants to book a meeting time, your studies can quickly hit a roadblock.

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Ben Aldred

How to recruit user research participants by email.

Research Recruitment | Research Ops

How to Recruit Research Participants by Email: The Complete Guide

Are you planning to recruit user research participants by email? Looking for advice on how to write a perfect recruitment email for a research study? In this article, you'll learn how to write a recruiting email for research and recruit research participants by email.

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Ben Aldred

Fundamentals

Top 4 UX Research Challenges In 2023

All UX researchers face common challenges in their quest to optimize product design and improve the customer experience.

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Ben Aldred

Responsible Research | Fundamentals

Getting started with Accessibility Research

Accessibility research is a growing topic, and the importance and benefits need to be taken into account when you’re running any kind of UX studies. But if you’re just starting out, it can be hard to know how to approach this kind of research and incorporate it into your existing processes.

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Ben Aldred

Research Ops

How To Succeed At Democratizing UX Research

Allowing everyone in your organization to contribute to product design and development can help employees feel empowered and valued. But should this extend to letting non-researchers contribute to UX research?

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Ben Aldred

Research Recruitment | Research Ops

User Research Recruitment Guide: 10 Steps For Recruiting Participants For Research

Finding high-quality research participants is one of the keys to helping your organization develop better products and provide a great customer experience. But what does recruiting participants for research mean?

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Ben Aldred

Responsible Research | Fundamentals

How to choose the right user research incentives

Recruiting people for UX research studies can be challenging. To attract and retain the right participants for each initiative, it’s helpful to offer user research incentives.

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Ben Aldred

Fundamentals

The Art of Asking Effective UX Research Questions

Running an effective UX research study relies on your ability to create questions for your participants that drive meaningful results for your organization.

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Ben Aldred

UX research screener survey and questions to ask.

Fundamentals

How to Create a Great Screener Survey for UX Research

Discover how to write a screener survey and audition your UX research participants with screener surveys.

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Ben Aldred

Research Ops | Tools

What is a User Research CRM

The amount of admin work that goes on before you get to the actual research is a lot. Before your research even begins, you have to find and screen participants, manage their incentives, collect consent, schedule user interviews and sessions, and do so much more.

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Ben Aldred

Responsible Research | Compliance

UX Research Consent Forms: Obtaining Consent for Research Projects

Getting informed consent from participants is a mandatory part of any responsible UX research study. In this guide, you’ll find everything you need to write a UX research consent form that positions your organization as an ethical, caring researcher.

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Ben Aldred

Compliance | Research Ops

Why Consent Management Is An Essential Part Of UX Research

f you’re undertaking any type of UX research, you need to understand the logistics of data privacy regulations and consent management—and the implications for your business if you conduct research without taking these into consideration.

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Ben Aldred

Fundamentals

Why Customer Experience Research Is A Smart Business Investment

Creating exceptional customer experiences has become a key differentiator for many companies trying to compete in crowded markets. But how do you know what your customers really need and want—and how can you ensure they get it?

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Ben Aldred

Compliance | Responsible Research

6 Steps to Ensuring GDPR Compliance in Research Projects

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the most robust global privacy law in effect today, but it shouldn’t be scary! It was designed to keep pace with how the world has changed and help people make sense of and have control over how their data is used.

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Ben Aldred

UX research process and framework explained.

Fundamentals

UX Research Process: 5-Step Framework for UX Research Projects

Discover the 5-step framework for running UX research and learn what the UX research process looks like in practice.

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Ben Aldred

Compliance | Responsible Research

GDPR for User Research (an introduction)

As User researchers, we constantly collect and analyse data to understand user behaviour and create better products and services. With the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (more commonly known as GDPR) in May 2018, we need to be aware of these regulations and how they impact our work.

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Ben Aldred

Research Ops

What is Research Ops: The Complete Guide to UX Research Ops

The term and the role of research ops encompasses everything that's needed to set a user research project in motion. Learn everything there is about research ops, and find out how to create a research ops program within your organization.

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Ben Aldred

Research Ops

Research Panel Management - The Complete Guide to Building and Managing Research Panels

Discover how you could build and manage your own research panels. Learn what the panel research management process looks like, and how to implement it for your organisation.

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Ben Aldred

Fundamentals

How To Create A UX Research Plan

Having a clear plan in place is essential before you spend valuable time and resources on any type of user research.

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Ben Aldred

Best UX research tools and software that researchers use in UX projects.

Tools | Research Ops

20 Incredible UX Research Tools to Run Your Next Project

Discover the 20 best UX research tools on the market today. Learn what tools user researchers use in their work.

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Ben Aldred

Compliance | Research Ops

Who owns your research data

I’ve spoken with a lot of people over the last two years about privacy, data protection laws and people’s rights and specifically, what that means for us as researchers.

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Ben Aldred

News | Compliance

What does privacy mean for Research Ops in 2021?

2020 was, well 2020. Part of the mad scramble to move everything online put a lot of pressure on us all. We had to totally re-imagine how we do research, everything was suddenly up for grabs. From the day to day jobs like running workshops, recruitment and group synthesis, to how we tell people’s stories and continue to bring the right people along with us within our organisations.

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Ben Aldred

Responsible Research

Consent is freely given

There is a natural imbalance of power that exists between the researcher and the person they’re learning from. There are some things you can do which help to make the participant more comfortable.

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Ben Aldred

Responsible Research

Decision Making Capacity

Decision making capacity (or DMC) comes from the informed consent doctrine; an ethical principle that is pervasive in modern medicine, but is often overlooked when talking about consent in the context of design research.

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Ben Aldred

Compliance

The data we collect

Being aware of what we’re recording and what kind of processing we need to do to it not only helps communicate our intent, but it can also save a lot of work in synthesis.

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Ben Aldred

Compliance | Responsible Research

Informed consent best practice

When we talk about informed consent in design research, we usually talk about the artifact itself - maybe a digital or paper form, and what should be disclosed in it.

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Ben Aldred

Compliance | Responsible Research

Rethinking the consent template

We’ve been making some improvements to the way we create and utilise consent forms in Participant Kit.

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Ben Aldred

Culture

How we handle participant data

At Participant Kit, we believe that how companies handle and process the information we provide them is fast becoming a key factor in deciding which services to use.

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Ben Aldred

Research Ops | Compliance

Recording and managing informed consent

In the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has published a helpful checklist, in line with the GDPR, for how you record and manage informed consent.

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Ben Aldred

Fundamentals | Compliance | Responsible Research

What is informed consent?

Before you do any research, you need to get evidence that the person you are learning from has understood your research, the potential consequences for them and that they have given you their permission to take part.

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Ben Aldred

News, tips and updates from Participant Kit

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