A moderated study is a one-on-one live conversation between a participant and a moderator. You'll gain an invaluable look into the mind of your target customer. During this session, you can ask participants questions while sharing a website, prototype, app, or more.

When conducting a moderated study, it's essential to keep in mind a few key points to ensure a successful experience for both you and your participants.

Setting up your schedule availability

Make sure to input availability on your calendar that is respectful of participants' time zones. If you are based in Australia but looking for participants in the United States, ensure that you provide available times that are suitable for people in the US to book. You’ll want always to ensure that your schedule settings, such as buffer time, advance notice, and maximum bookings per day, do not prevent participants from booking available times on your calendar. Additionally, double-check your time zone to prevent scheduling errors as best practice.

How far in advance should I set up my calendar availability?

• We recommend having your prototype, website, or the digital asset ready to go before setting up your availability. Once you set up your calendar, participants will start booking time so if your prototype or asset isn’t ready yet, it will most likely lead to a cancellation or rescheduling request, which isn’t a great experience for the participant.
• If you are looking to target a more general demographic, we recommend allowing two days to recruit before your first availability. If you are looking for a more niche demographic, the more time you can allow to recruit, the better.

How many participants should I recruit for this study?

• The recommended number of participants for this study is 5 - 10.

How to limit no-shows?

• Be mindful of how many times you reschedule. Rescheduling too many participants will increase the likelihood of "no-shows". The more you reschedule, the more issues they have.
• We recommend not scheduling too far in advance. If you launch a study and set times on your calendar for a distant date, participants are more likely not to show up. Of course, you want to give yourself enough time to recruit participants (a few days) but do not schedule all sessions weeks in advance.
• Add a lot of availability to your calendar, we’ve noticed a correlation between studies that have limited availability have higher no show rates.
• Tip: Try not to set your availability for holidays or late on a Friday afternoon, as we typically see the highest rates of no-shows during these times.

How long should I stay on the call before dropping off if a participant hasn’t joined yet

• We recommend waiting 10 minutes to ensure the participant has enough time to join!

Policies to keep in mind

Here is a list of policies that we recommend viewing as best practice.

• Reschedule: Chat us with the participant's name and the project name with at least 24 hours’ notice to reschedule.
• Cancel: You can cancel; however, you will not be issued a refund for the session.
• No show: If a participant does not show up for your study, select "participant did not show" under the participants tab. You'll have the option to either add the credits back to your workspace or have us recruit a new participant for your study.
• Misrepresentation: Please exit the session immediately (before you hit the 5-minute mark). Send a message to our chat support team with the participant's name, and we will find a replacement for you.

Browser vs. Zoom App

You can join a moderated session from either your browser or the Zoom app. You will have all the controls of Zoom. However, there are a few things to keep in mind when deciding if you want to join from the browser or the app.

Considerations for joining via browser:

• You’ll be able to take live notes during the session that only the moderators and collaborators will be able to see
• If you use the Safari web browser, you cannot screen share.