The UX researcher can either do the recruiting themselves or involve a third party. The advantages and disadvantages of both approaches are described in the following sections.
The self-recruiting UX researcher can find participants through different means, including asking coworkers and friends and family of coworkers to participate, using advertisements or identifying existing customers that are willing to provide feedback.
Coworkers are one of the most easily accessible and cheapest groups of participants. If coworkers are co-located, in-person testing may be an option. Yet, many companies have geographically distributed offices, and reaching folks across the company thus requires the use of remote methodologies.
The main disadvantage of recruiting coworkers is the higher likelihood that they are biased; they may have worked on the product themselves, they may know someone who does, or they may already have heard good or bad feedback about...