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We want to start our first shielded-off research, and want to invite active members in our Community. Also, we want this research to have a continious cycle, connected to sprints from our developers team.





Trying to work out this proces, we've run into some challenges. Maybe some of you already have experience with this, and can gice us some tips & tricks. Or share your best practices.





I'll first desribe the cycle I would like to implement, and afterwards state the questions these pose.





Process


1.


Invite active Community members, with a detailed desciption with is expected of them.





2.


Ask them to replay if they want to join, so that we can give them access to the bèta app we want them to test.





3.


Starting monday, they will have 1 week to test the app.





4.


On Friday send them the URL to the shielded-off Insided Research item. Give them the weekend to fill it in.





5.


On Monday close the research item.





6.


After collecting all the data and feedback, share this with the participants. And ask them if they would like to participate in the next research item, based on a new build of the app (hich we will improve upon their feedback).





7.


Repeat steps 1 to 6.





Questions


1.a Does anyone have experience with inviting Community memebers for a shielded-off reasearch?


- How did you approach them?


- And if they wanted to join, how did you give them access through the back-end?





1.b How do you select Community members?


- The ones that already took part in a reasearch item in the past?


- Members that are very active within certain topics of the forum? (We haven't identified our Super Users yet).





2. When is the best time to give participants acces to the research form? Right from the beginning when they have acces to the bèta app, or as I proposed in step 4, do this a few days later so they have time to test it more thoroughly?





I'm looking forward to see if you guys have any feedback for me, or some other general Tip & Tricks.
Hi Jorn, you already got your answers by e-mail at this time, but i'll share the pointers here again for other interested members.





General best practices


  • Try to do as much research in public as possible. Find out if there are valid reasons to carry out the research in a closed environment. There might be bugs in the app is not a valid reason for example. Challenge the product owner if you think the research could just as easily be carried out in public.

  • On every point in the journey where you ask someone to do something (sign up somewhere, send you a private message, reactivate participants for a next phase in the research e.d.) you’ll risk losing them. Try to limit these events to the absolute minimum.

  • Active participation on the community of the product owner will yield a higher engagement than just a moderator or community manager merely passing along feedback to the internal organisation. The sense of influence will be higher and there is the possibility to actually discuss specific items directly with the person responsible for the subject of the research within the company.





My advice to setup this specific invite only app development pilot would be:


  1. Invite forum base by e-mail with a registration form (Google Forms / SurveyMonkey e.d.) to find out if users use Android, iOS, or both. Register the correct e-mail address for application distribution (Google Play and iCloud) Register forum username to assign custom roles and of course give the option to unsubscribe from further research invitations by e-mail.

  2. Prepare a research topic containing an introduction, info on what the process looks like, timelines, scope, what you like participants to focus on, how you handle feedback and when.

  3. Apply custom user role to all participants

  4. E-mail participants who filled out the form the link to the invite only research topic

  5. Start beta app distribution, participant will usually receive an e-mail from the app distribution system (depending on configuration)

  6. During 1 to 2 weeks you gather feedback on the app. The product owner and (if needed) developers are directly participating in the research topic on the community answering questions, troubleshooting, validating solutions etc.

  7. Product owner thanks all participants for their feedback and gives a recap of all feedback and what will be done with each feedback item.

  8. If possible give a public recap on the research in a post on the community and or blog / newsletter etc.





Hope this helps! 🙂

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