Things to do before you “get out of the building”
From devising a screener to scheduling a first interview
After spending a month watching my target users online, I was ready to meet them in person.
The topic that I am investigating is sensitive and has a stigma attached to it — a postpartum depression.
No wonder, finding moms to talk about is going to be a challenge. That is exactly why User Research is critical to design a solution that meet the needs, that are hidden behind closed doors.
I hacked my way to the users — I have joined a postpartum depression group, but have been asked to leave it, since I wasn’t suffering from depression and, reasonably, the group was setup for those who are.
Nevertheless, leaders of group have contacted me and offered help to recruit the users for interviews.
Customer development tip: Ask your early supporters to help you. Even they can’t get you what you what , they will try the best to help you. If they won’t , it’s a sign of an invalidated problem hypothesis or a wrong target user.
I based my screener on Michael Margolis research screener worksheet by Google Ventures
Then I have setup a google form and add a link to it on the recruitment page which I shared with my early support — a first earlyevangelist. She sent the call to action to several Facebook groups for moms — +1k users — and slowly requests for interview have started trickling down.
In a week I had 14 candidates for interview. 50% of them weren’t qualified for an interview.
Some of the questions in the questionnaire (without revealing “right answers”) were designed to exclude non-profile users. I wanted to rule out moms who had predisposition to have a depressive episode — such as, health issues of a baby or a mom.
The responses have started to validate one of my early assumptions — that breastfeeding moms would incline at least to share their postpartum depressive episode, or maybe incline to have more postpartum depressive episodes than non-breastfeeding moms in general (my sampling definitely is not representative to state the latter claim).
But for sure, I have started to see that breastfeeding is one the common behavioral trait among my target users.
Well, this is might not be obvious, by breastfeeding is a huge implication on user behavior — early weeks moms spend hours daily feeding their babies. The only way they can get their mind off from continuous and monotonous task is to — use their phone (one of the main assumptions to be validated)
Now, the question is what do they do on their phone while feeding the babies? Would they use my product that satisfy their needs? What these needs are?
Now, it was time to contact participants and schedule interviews.
And, as well, to contact excluded participants to thank them for trying. I have decided to tell a “white lie” to them — “ Sorry, all interviews seats are already taken”.
And, I have asked their permission to send them a prototype when it’s ready. 2 out of 7 confirmed continuous participation.
Customer development tip: It’s inevitably you are going to loose users here and there. The trick is to be a part of community where you can replenish you user base.
I have sent an invite to an interview, some participants never got responded back, and finally with few left — 3 — I was able get them tell their stories.
As you might know, 5 users that match the user profile is enough for a qualitative study.
So, I needed to get few more moms interested to talk with me.
One of the expected challenge that comes with user research is recruitment. Be prepared for that — start early, reach for big pool and fetch only few. Rinse and repeat.
What I have learned is to be prepared for failure at every step.
As before, I needed to hack a bit, I have joined few closed Facebook groups for depressive moms ,as well as, for maternal professionals. I have started read the feed regularly and looking for an active mom who wants to share her story.
And turns out, moms who are feel alone and isolated do that a lot! The post their stories on their blog, shoot video and share with the trusted community. I have reached to them directly and asked for interview — majority of them responded right away eagerly.
So, I have it — a magic number 5+ some more moms scheduled for a first interview.
Read the next post to know how the interviews went and , most importantly, what these interviews taught me.
This is a post from series #productdesign where I practice product design and customer development.
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