I want to set my profile.

Usability Testing: I want to set up a Database of product testers. What questions should I ask on the profile page?

• What questions would companies that utilize this database want answered

• Answer:

  You shouldn't ask any questions because you shouldn't set up a database of product testers. There are a few drawbacks to keeping a database. 1. The upkeep is a drag. Contact information goes out of date really fast. 2. You now have personally identifying information that you are responsible for. This is no small thing. 3. You end up with people in your studies who do a lot of studies. You might want that, but most teams don't want people who do a lot of studies. 4. You can't think of all the attributes that you might want data about. That means that later, you might be eliminating people who would be good participants for a particular study because you haven't thought to ask people that one more thing. 5. It's easy to exhaust your list or database pretty quickly if you and your team run user research or usability test sessions fairly regularly. So you have to find a way to market the database that keeps fresh people coming in all the time. The database approach means you're treating your participants like objects, no, more like lab rats. They're not. They are generous human beings who are doing you a favor by giving you feedback about your designs. Having said all that, you should do all your own recruiting. Doing your own recruiting, with a fresh set of requirements and a big pool of candidates for each study, gives you bonus user research -- the kind that most UX people are missing by getting someone else to do their recruiting. What do I mean by "bonus user research?" Well, there's that moment when the recruiter asks the questions in the screener and the participant gives the answer that terminates the interview. But they might otherwise qualify. And you might find out that a lot of people are disqualified similarly. Which might mean that you're missing people who would actually buy and use your product or service. If you do the recruiting yourself, you get to make those trade-offs yourself, and you get to make that discovery. And, by the way, you'll end up with better data. P.S. They're not testers. They're participants.