Except relationship, we found that there are other three factors that might motivate people to participate in user research.
3 Months
Team Project
User Interview, Desktop Survey,
Journey Map, Affinity Diagram, Remote Moderated Usability Testing, Figma
Visual Design, Experience Strategy,
User Research, Use Testing
Wireframe, Design System,
High-Fidelity Prototype
Our client has successfully recruited everywhere in the world, but when attempting to expand into the Chinese market, everything became difficult.
The Chinese market, unlike others, consists of users of very private people who tend to be skeptical and defensive when it comes to sharing personal information, especially to strangers.
With cold calling out of the question, our client needed a new way to connect with their Chinese audience.
Nineteen different users were asked to participate in remote 20-minute interviews.
Due to the nature of user research, different types would need to recruit people from various demographics, any Chinese can become our potential users.
Thus, the key goal of our user research is to understand the mindsets of our Chinese users towards user research.
We came up with an following question.
We conducted interviewed, competitor research and desktop research.
Though generally Chinese people have a widespread skepticism towards user research, there are still many cases where companies have successfully collected users' data.
For the next step, we want to understand what motivate the Chinese to participate in it before and what are their expected rewards.
We also analyzed some gamification theories to explore more possibilities to strengthen motivation.
Considering that interpersonal relationships have a great impact in the Chinese society, our design focus was to build on that and expand the trust level of the public for our platform.
Our solutions focus on user's existing network connection and building the trust level through WeChat, the most popular social media application in China.
On this platform, connection between user research tasks and WeChat friends is visible, which creates an air of trustworthiness, authenticity in our task recruitment information.
When users logged into WeChat, they immediately saw friend-referred tasks at the top of the Discovery page.
By associating with WeChat’s existing network connection, our platform allowed users to see friends who were signed up or viewed tasks. They were also free to message their friends to ask for the specific tasks.
We found that, when tasks where referred to users by friends, people were more likely to complete them as not only a favor, but a way to sustain their relationships.
This incentive system was created to encourage users to share their task referrals to friends on WeChat. Each time they shared a task, both the referrer and referee would be rewarded with unique points.
Referral Mechanics
The task referral can be sent to friends on WeChat as a message or shared to WeChat moment. Based on the task progression of the individual referee, the referrer is rewarded accordingly. The rewards can be redeemed into cash via WeChat Wallet.
When conducting traditional user-research recruitment, recruiters manually implement different practices which usually takes up to half a month to find enough suitable participants for effective user-research.
Addressing participants’ concerns, confirming different research times with recruiters, and screening users based on their eligibility resulted in constant back-and-forth communication between recruiters and users. This process was not only archaic, but also time-consuming. Recruiters relied on WeChat and Excel Sheets as their main methods of communicating updates, collecting user-data, and managing each research session’s time.
Previous Recruitment Flow
Instead of relying on third-party software, our client can now use the platform to manage and oversee the entire recruitment process.
Users can now:
• Find new research recruitment tasks through referrals or active searches
• Be on-boarded to the platform
• View and sign up to tasks
• Pass screening and schedule times
• Confirm tasks and receive reminders
• Complete their tasks and redeem their rewards
User Journey Map
As soon as users agree to participate in a task, they are asked to complete certain screening questions to determine their eligibility. Their answers are inputted to the database which allows the platform to automatically select eligible participants and share their screening results.
After passing the screening session, user-research participants need to choose their user-session time on a first-come-first-serve availability system. However, if they so choose, they can also be shortlisted as back-up participants on fully-booked days. In this case, back-up participants will be contacted in case of a cancellation.
Once they’ve scheduled, users simply need to await their confirmation notification. The system will automatically prioritize participants with higher levels of credibility.
To compile enough information and insight into the intuitiveness and usability of the UI, we conducted up to four rounds of remote user testing. This gave us valuable insight into the clarity of our four basic user-flows. We were able to clearly see how users felt and thought about our unique points and cash-incentive system, thanks to positive comments and great product engagement as soon as the product launched.
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All of the UI components used in the Kontech prototype have been built and customized based on the Vant WeApp WeChat mini-program component library. We wanted to clearly and professionally prove the simple efficiency of our new platform, while also letting its users feel connected, encouraged, and rewarded for their participation.
I overcame the challenges of remote collaboration with our team in this special period to achieve our goals, and we delivered a functional prototype of our WeChat mini-program. In addition, I learnt Design Sprint methodology to fast forward our product.
Because our school regulations, we are not allow to create an product in other language, the project will be continued and localized in China by our clients.
