At the start of 2016, who would have thought we’d end the year facing Brexit, Trump coming to office and the loss of so many greats? For us, a positive antidote to all this gloom was yet another great year at People for Research. Not only did we work on some really cool projects, but we got to work with some great clients from the usability and market research sectors as well, not forgetting the many and varied participants who are essential to making this all happen!

I always find it a fascinating exercise to look back at previous years’ forecasts of what we think we will be doing in a specific year. All businesses have to make forecasts and it’s one of the challenges we all have to complete when we really don’t know what is in-store for the next six months, let alone one, two and three years down the road. However, I’ve always believed that if you set out your direction, you are already more than 50% there!

Growing in the UX, usability and market research worlds

Participant sign ups to our database are growing at our best rate ever at just over 57% over the last 12 months, so our awesome digital marketing team has been set even bigger targets for the next year.

We also ran a hugely successful ‘Make the Web Accessible’ campaign, teaming up with some great partners to help raise awareness of this important sector to include in research. Although the new year brings a new campaign, we will carry on promoting digital inclusion with our partners within the accessibility sector.

Our UK coverage continues to grow from strength to strength, so we can offer a true UK wide service to our clients. We will continue to further develop our participant data in key areas, including Scotland and Wales, as well as our first overseas development of data in Ireland. Participant data growth is a key area that we will continue to work on with plans for more strategic growth, both home and abroad.

So the team could learn more about the projects they recruit for, we had a fantastic presentation by Laurence Tempest, a UX professional, which helped us understand and appreciate more of what our clients do.

It was totally fascinating and insightful, largely due to Laurence’s brilliant presentation and humour! Our core business will always be in providing first class participants, so it really helps to know where that fits in the complete UX journey of a project.

I’m particularly impressed this year by the team’s ability to recruit some really challenging sectors. Working on the Government Digital Services (DGS) contract, we have been tasked with finding some really tough and, in some occasions, sensitive projects. Listening to some of the screening processes was a real eye opener and some 20 years ago, when I first started participant recruitment, I never thought would be possible.

Great work, team PFR! There’s plenty planned for 2017 and I can’t wait to look back in 12 months’ time to review what we’ve achieved.

Paul Gooding, Chief Executive Officer

If you would like to find out more about our in-house participant recruitment service for user testing or market research get in touch on 0117 921 0008 or info@peopleforresearch.co.uk.

At People for Research, we recruit participants for UX and usability testing and market research. We work with award winning UX agencies across the UK and partner up with a number of end clients who are leading the way with in-house user experience and insight.