User research is one of the most important steps in creating a digital product. If you are a UX designer or a researcher like me, and you are trying to find the ideal tool for your remote research, you’ll find some useful information in this post.

It’s that time of the year when businesses allocate the budget for their projects, and more often than not…

Research budget is limited.

The main task of conducting a research is getting the right participants and the cheapest way to do it is a guerrilla research, but this kind of approach isn’t always the right option. Sometimes you can’t get to your target group just because they may be in another country.

Guerrilla Research sometimes isn’t the best option.

However, there are a lot of online tools which provide the option to do research remotely, but how to decide which tool to use?

Key Questions

Let’s say that you have already defined goals for your study. Here are 5 key questions you have to answer before deciding which tool to use.

Which research method to use?

If you are going to do usability testing, then it’s important for you to know on which platform to conduct testing.

Who are your participants?

Do you have your list of participants or you have to find them?

What’s your budget?

Budget is the first step in filtering available options. Unfortunately, none of the options are free, but they start from around $20 per participant.

What will you need from the service you’ll use?

It’s important to identify what you need from your research. There is a big chance you’ll only use some of the features of the advanced solutions.

What do you have to provide to the service to start your test?

Tasks, recruitment questions, images…

Looking at the table below and answering those five questions, I’m sure you can find the research tool which suits your next research needs in under five minutes.