When I first started usability testing, my first thought was: who do I test?

Short answer: It depends on the focus of the research.

Long answer: Testing branding or discovery is helpful to new users; complex back-end tests are useful for longtime users. Putting together a group of people for every test is an important, but time-consuming, part of usability testing.

As the resident researcher at ShortStack, it’s my job to explore and question every part of our platform. ShortStack is robust and versatile; we’re a service that helps people create forms, landing pages, and promotions, and manage the leads they collect.

To streamline my research process, I recently created a research panel of ShortStack customers. Some UX researchers call this a “research group,” or a “resource.” Essentially, a research panel is a group of new or existing users of your platform who opt in to assist you with your research. Here’s why and how to make one.

The benefit of a research panel

Analytics alone aren’t enough for me to make meaningful conclusions and recommended design changes to my team. We want direct input from our customers. The panel serves two purposes:

Customer buy-in. Roping customers into our research gives them transparency into our process and a stake in the platform.

Convenience. The panel means we don’t have to seek out people for every study; we have a pool of people to whom we can always reach out, so it saves us time trying to find the “right” people for a particular study.

Essentially, a research panel allows me to do more experiments faster, with less of the administrative busy-work.