# 🛠️ Sponsor users
# Phase: 🛠️ Problem solving
Focus: Test
IN BRIEF
Time commitment: Varies according to how many sponsor users must be recruited and how often their help is used Difficulty: Moderate Materials needed: Potential sponsor users from whom to draw; persistent test mechanism/platform for testers (pre-prod environment, InVision static link, etc), persistent venue for feedback from testers (physical or virtual) Who should participate: User experience designers, visual designers, product/project owners, community specialists, developers Best for: Gathering ongoing feedback from individuals or groups closely aligned with your key user types or personas; having potential testers “on call” for when there may not be time for a full tester recruitment exercise
# About this tool
While it’s always ideal to recruit best-fit participants for any user testing exercise, you may not always have the time, bandwidth or financial resources to do so. That’s where sponsor users come in: a select group of regular, engaged users who align with your key personas and are willing to provide regular feedback on your product or service, either organically on their own accord or as a result of prompts you’ve given them. Think of them as user testers on retainer — and while they may not always be the perfect test bed for the things you need to test, you know that you can rely on them to provide feedback when you need it.
When seeking out sponsor users, aim to recruit both to the “middle of the road” for your key personas and for edge cases, particularly edge cases that you’ve identified as being more painful than usual. Fortunately, in an open-source organization, both categories can be reasonably easy to find; however, be aware that self-identified sponsor users may have strong perspectives that don’t always align with the feelings of your users as a whole.
When working with sponsor users on individual test exercises, pay particular attention to the consistency of the user experience in the tests themselves; while one-off test participants don’t necessarily know if you bounce back and forth between a variety of testing platforms and paradigms, repeat participants do, and the frustration they may experience as a result runs the risk of coloring your test results.