As a participant at User Interviews, you'll get communications from and be able to contact two parties: the User Interviews support team and the research team for a study. It's important to know the difference in who does what so if you have questions or need help, you know who to go to.
As a good rule of thumb, any questions before you're confirmed for a study can be forwarded to our support team, and any questions about a specific study you're confirmed for should be sent through the messages tool to the researcher.
What does the User Interviews support team do?
UI provides the platform where researchers can find participants for their studies. They'll be your point of contact for account questions, general participation questions, and if you need to report any bugs. You can reach them here.
The UI support team:
- Can help troubleshoot issues with your account. If you're having trouble verifying your account, logging in, or need help editing your account, our support team can assist.
- Can answer general questions about how UI works. Curious about how how this all works, or what to expect? Our support team is here for you.
- Is your go-to to report bugs or screener errors. Our support team will forward bug reports to our tech team, and will relay screener errors to to research team that owns that study.
- Can help with incentives paying a "Choice of dozens of digital gift cards" reward. Please note that our support team cannot assist with incentives until it has been 10 business days since the session.
- Is here for you if you feel there's been researcher misbehavior. For example, if after 10 business days you do not see your session listed under the "My Studies" tab of your account, a researcher has invited you apply to a study off-platform, or you feel you've been mistreated in some way, please contact our support team.
- Welcomes feedback on the platform or participant experience. We're a user research platform, after all, so we respect and encourage feedback! Feel free to submit ideas, feature requests, or other comments about how we can improve to our support team.
What do research teams who use the User Interviews platform do?
Researchers come to UI to find participants for their studies, and own their own study. They'll be your point of contact for all things related to a specific study. You can reach them through the messages tool in your participant dashboard or by clicking the blue "Message the researcher" button found in your confirmation email.
Researcher teams:
- Create their own studies. Researchers write their own title, description, and screener. While the UI team can make suggestions to researchers to fix errors or improve screeners, we cannot make updates without the researcher's consent.
- Choose participants. Research teams choose participants for their own studies, meaning the UI team has no control over who's selected. While we'd love to place you in a study you feel you're well suited for, we do not have that authority.
- Set the schedule. The session times or deadlines are set by the research teams, so the UI team can't offer new times, extend deadlines, etc.
- Cancel or reschedule participants. If you need to cancel or reschedule your session, please contact the researcher through the messages tool. Since they own their schedule, our team should be a last resort for cancelling or rescheduling if you haven't heard back from the researcher.
- Conduct the sessions. Researchers conduct their own studies. Any session related details—links, instructions, troubleshooting, confirmation that your task was successfully submitted—is information only they have. The UI team doesn't have this information. If you have not received your link, or need help accessing your session, please contact the researcher using the messages tool.
- Issue payment or have payment information for studies paying anything other than a "Choice of dozens of digital gift cards". Researchers have the option to issue payment themselves. If a study is paying anything other than a "Choice of dozens of digital gift cards", the research team is issuing the incentive. Our team does not have tracking or details on that payment. If it has been 10 business days and you have not received payment, you can reach out to our support team, but we are not able to intervene before that point.
