Schedule user interviews without the hassle

As a product manager, one of the biggest blockers stopping my team from moving quickly was being able to rapidly iterate on feedback and insights from users. Organising user interviews for generative and evaluative research would be a time-consuming process. Often, two or three team members would be blocked up for hours at a time trawling through lists of users, sending out screening surveys and emailing back and forth to book in interviews. This was painful, and stopped us from making informed product decisions on a daily basis.

To move quickly, product researchers need tools that aid them in their research, and make it easier to get to insights they couldn't otherwise uncover. Researchers need flexibility in who they can recruit, and where and when they talk to a user.

Flexibility in how to engage in research is also useful for your participants. People live busy lives, and research participants are likelier to engage in research that fits their own schedules.  

That's why, today, we're thrilled to make available a new way to start research sessions on Ribbon: Scheduled Sessions. You can now specify times in your calendar that you want to book in user interviews for, and the Ribbon widget will find and book in participants for you, directly from your own website. No more email lists, back and forth emailing or recruiting from low-intent user testing panels.  

Here's how it works:

Before starting a session you can add availability to your personal calendar. Any time slots you mark as available will be available for users to choose once you start recruiting for a session:

Any scheduled sessions you add to your room will appear in your public scheduling page, which you can send people to either by sharing your personal link or through the widget:

When a participant schedules a session, we'll automatically send them an email asking them to confirm their session. Any scheduled sessions that get booked by a participant will appear in your room:

You can now choose if you want to start an Instant Session (allowing you to speak to a user immediately) or Scheduled Session. To recruit participants for your scheduled sessions, you can use either the widget or share your personal scheduling link. Using the widget will trigger the Ribbon Widget on your website to invite users to book in scheduled research sessions on your pre-defined time slots:

When a session starts, you'll be able to join your session directly from your room on Ribbon. Email confirmations and reminders are sent out automatically by Ribbon, meaning you get more time back to focus on what actually matters, your research and building a better product experience for your users.

Happy interviewing,

Axel and the Ribbon team