Q&A: What kind of people participate in your usability studies?

I got a great question recently, very timely because I'm in the usability lab this week looking at something in Word:Mac and PowerPoint:Mac. Here's the question:

What kind of users do you have participate in your usability studies?

The answer is dependent upon the study that I'm running. For the vast majority of the studies that we here in the Macintosh Business Unit do, the minimum requirements are that participants must be Mac users, they must use their Mac at least 20 hours per week, and they must use either Tiger or Leopard.

Additional requirements are study-dependent. For example, for the study that my team is conducting this week, we have some additional requirements. They need to be Mac users at work, and they need to use a Mac at least 20 hours per week at work. Additionally, they need to share files frequently with other users at work.

My previous study was an Entourage study. In that study, I was also looking for users who use their Macs at work at least 20 hours per week. For that study, I recruited users who were deeply into personal information management: they needed to use mail, calendar, and address book. We had a mix of users of various solutions. Some were Entourage users, some were webmail users, some used other clients, some used a mix of all of the above.

In any case, the users that we bring in for studies are dependent upon my research questions. For each of these, I was considering features that were most likely to be used in a business setting, which is why I recruited for users who use their Macs at work. For the Entourage study, I had several in-depth questions about calendar usage, so I needed users who are currently using some electronic method of keeping up with their calendar.

When I look at the job titles for the people who are taking part in my study this week, I see a range of people and professions: a teacher, a couple of small business owners, a project manager, a HR manager, and more. We get lots of different people in the lab who have varied experiences, which ultimately helps us build better products.

I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that you can sign up to participate in our usability studies. Microsoft User Research announces some studies on twitter here and on Facebook here (these are for all studies, not just the Mac ones!), and I also announce some studies via twitter here.