As a participant, you'll interact with two parties: the User Interviews support team and the research team running the study you're in. Knowing who does what helps you get help faster.
Good rule of thumb: Questions before you're confirmed for a study go to our support team. Questions about a specific study you're confirmed for go to the researcher through the messages tool.
What does the User Interviews Support team do?
User Interviews provides the platform where researchers find participants. Our support team is your point of contact for account and general participation questions, as well as bug reports. Contact our support team
The User Interviews support team can:
- Help troubleshoot account issues. If you're having trouble verifying your account, logging in, or need help editing your profile, we're here to help.
- Answer general questions about how User Interviews works. Curious about how this all works or what to expect? Reach out anytime.
- Handle bug reports and screener errors. We'll forward bug reports to our tech team and relay screener errors to the research team that owns the study.
- Help with incentives paid as "choice of dozens of digital gift cards." Note that we can't assist with incentives until 10 business days have passed since your session.
- Step in if you experience researcher misbehavior. If it's been more than 10 business days and your session isn't showing under the My Studies tab, a researcher has invited you to apply to a study off-platform, or you feel you've been mistreated in any way, please contact our support team.
- Welcome your feedback. We're a user research platform, so we genuinely value your input. Send us ideas, feature requests, or comments anytime.
What do research teams do?
Researchers use User Interviews to find participants for their studies. They own their study entirely and are your point of contact for anything related to a specific session. You can reach them through the messages tool in your participant dashboard or by selecting Message the researcher in your confirmation email.
Research teams:
- Create their own studies. Researchers write their own title, description, and screener. While our team can suggest fixes or improvements, we can't make changes without the researcher's consent.
- Choose their own participants. Selection decisions are entirely up to the researcher. User Interviews has no control over who gets selected.
- Set the schedule. Session times and deadlines are set by the researcher. Our team can't offer new times or extend deadlines.
- Manage cancellations and reschedules. If you need to cancel or reschedule, contact the researcher through the messages tool first. Our team should be a last resort if the researcher hasn't responded.
- Conduct the sessions. All session details - links, instructions, task confirmation - are held by the researcher. If you haven't received your session link or need help accessing your session, message the researcher directly.
- Issue payment for incentives other than "choice of dozens of digital gift cards." If a study is paying anything other than "choice of dozens of digital gift cards," the researcher is handling payment. Our team doesn't have tracking or details on that payment. If it's been 10 business days and you haven't been paid, you can reach out to our support team, but we're unable to intervene before then.