Interviews allows you to easily schedule and manage moderated studies with your own audience. Whether you want to conduct a user interview or observe your participants as they complete a usability test, moderated studies are ideal for gathering detailed insights. You can run sessions with your preferred video conferencing tool, all while using your UsabilityHub account to screen participants, review and manage applications, book sessions, and even offer and keep track of participant incentives!
This feature is currently only available for scheduling sessions with your own audience. You can't schedule Interview sessions with the UsabilityHub panel at this time. Let us know if this is something you're interested in.
In this article
Begin by selecting the Interviews tab at the top of the page in your UsabilityHub account:
Adding your study details
From the Interviews page, click +Create new study.
Enter a name for your study and click Create. Your study name is an internal name only and won't be shown to your participants.
You will immediately be taken to the Setup tab where you can customize the details of your study.
Your Session name is different from your Study name and will be visible to your participants. It will be auto-filled with your company name or your first name if provided at signup, but if you'd like to change it, you can edit it from here.
We have also pre-filled a generic session description that your participants will see in their invitation. If you would like to change the wording, you can edit it from here.
Specify the duration of your study by choosing a timeframe from the dropdown menu.
If you're using the same meeting link for all of your sessions, paste it in the Location text box. If you'd prefer to use unique links for each participant session, leave this box blank. You can then manage individual links for each session once they're booked.
Finally, you can specify the devices from which participants can join your study, and whether they will need to have access to their device's microphone or camera, or both.
Adding screener questions
You can screen participants in or out of your study by having them answer a set of questions.
Below your study details, click Add screener questions.
You may use single choice, multiple choice, short text, or long text answers.
Both single and multiple choice questions allow you to select which option(s) automatically qualify or disqualify participants from a session.
Multiple choice questions allow you to specify which options are not relevant, if any.
Short and long text answers do not allow you to automatically qualify or disqualify participants. You must review these answers and manually select participants for a session.
Adding team members
If you're on a team account, you can add other team members as co-hosts. When you do, they automatically receive a notification when a session is booked.
Click Add member in the top right corner of the Team members box and select a teammate from the list. You can invite as many team members as are on your account.
User roles
By default, the creator of the study will be the Main host, and any additional team members will become co-hosts. All communication sent to participants will come from the Main host. You can switch the roles around, but there can only be one Main host.
Calendar integration
How it works
Connecting your Google calendar(s) will automatically block participants from booking over any scheduled events in your calendar. If your team members have also connected their calendars, only your overlapping availability will be shown to participants.
Your team members are not required to connect their calendars in order to schedule sessions, but if you want to automatically add sessions into their calendar and avoid meeting clashes, they should do so through the Integrations settings in their UsabilityHub account.
How to set it up
If it's your first time creating an Interview, click Connect calendar to the right of your name. You only need to do this once. You can also do this from your Integrations settings prior to setting up your study.
A pop-up will appear where you must sign into your Google account and allow permissions for UsabilityHub to access your Google calendar.
Once linked, click the 0 calendars button and select which calendar(s) you would like the platform to check for availability. Your team members will need to do this from their Integrations settings when connecting their calendar.
In the Booking calendar box, select which calendar you'd like the sessions to be booked into:
Setting your availability
Set the date range for your study.
Set the time zone and then select the days and times you'll be available to host sessions. Days which are toggled off will be completely unavailable for participants to book. You can split each day into shifts by clicking the + sign next to the times.
If you would like to avoid back-to-back sessions, you can add a buffer before and/or after your sessions, which will be taken into account when showing your availability to participants:
If you add a buffer before, a session can't be booked immediately after another event in your calendar, e.g. if you set a 15 min buffer before your sessions and have an internal meeting until 10:00am, the earliest a participant can book is 10:15am.
If you add a buffer after, participants will not be able to be book a time slot within that amount of time after another session.
If you add a buffer both before and after, the times will be added together, e.g. setting a 5 min buffer before and after means that participants will not be able to book sessions within 10 min of each other.
You can add date overrides to edit availability or completely block out certain dates from your calendar that may not be a part of your normal schedule, e.g. public holidays and/or half days. Click +Add a date at the bottom of the Date overrides box and set your availability for that particular day from the pop up.
Previewing your study
When you're ready to preview your study from the perspective of a participant, you can select the Preview button on the Setup page located on the left side of the screen:
When previewing a study you will be asked to insert a full name and email at which point you will be guided through the screener if one is setup for your study. The data provided (name, email, screener answers, and time slot booking) during the preview is not saved. There will not be an email sent to the provided email during this process.
Previewing automated emails
At the bottom of the Setup page you'll see a section titled Automated emails. Here you can preview the Invitation, Confirmation, Reminder, Reschedule, Cancellation, and Thank you emails before they are sent to participants.
Click the Send preview button to see what that particular email looks like to your participants; it will come as a test email to the email address you are logged in with. The test email will display the study details you filled in during setup, but the incentive (if applicable) and the participant information will display default placeholder text. In the actual emails you send to participants, those placeholders will be replaced with the data specific to your study and your participants.
Ready to recruit? Check out our article on Recruiting participants for Interviews.
Have questions or feedback? Click the Beta feedback button in the top right corner of your account to let us know!