An Update on PowWow

Laura Sweltz, Director of UX Research and Strategic Initiatives

Article Category: #News & Culture

Posted on

Over a year ago we initially launched PowWow, a tool designed to help schedule user research sessions. People far and wide started using it, noting that it just made scheduling user research so much easier (exactly what we were hoping to achieve).

We built PowWow for ourselves to fill an internal need, but shared it with the community in the hopes that others would benefit from it as well. We are thrilled by the response we’ve received. To those who tried out PowWow, and especially to those who reached out with feedback and suggestions for improvement, thank you.

We’re back today to announce some exciting new updates.

More General Language

Plenty of people outside the user research field wrote to let us know they use PowWow for all kinds of things beside user research. To better support our user base, we freshened up the homepage and language across the site, making it less focused on user research and friendlier for a general audience.

Maximum Number of Appointments

When trying to get potential participants to sign up for an appointment, it’s tempting to spread the word to the masses to ensure you get enough sign-ups. But you don’t want too many sign-ups, so we’ve added the ability to set a maximum number of bookable appointments for a project. Now you can share your calendar with all of Twitter, but still end up with just the right number of booked appointments.

Automatic Reminders

We streamlined the process for scheduling appointments and sending confirmation emails. Now we’re making things even easier by automatically sending reminder emails to participants. Reminder emails are optional and customizable; you control the text of the message as well as how early the reminder is sent out.    

Delete Appointments

Sometimes things come up and you need to delete an existing appointment. Now you can delete appointments directly from the PowWow calendar. You also have the option to send an email to the participant letting them know about the cancellation.  

Language Support

People all around the world use PowWow and they don’t necessarily want the participant calendar to display in English. You now have the ability to choose a different language for an individual project. We support French, Spanish, German, and Italian. (Want us to support another language? If you’re interested in providing the necessary translations, reach out and let us know. We’re happy to add it.)  

One More Thing

We’re changing domains. You can now find us at usepowwow.com.  

 

If you already use PowWow, we’re so glad! If not, why not give it a whirl?

Laura Sweltz

Laura is Viget's Director of UX Research and Strategic Initiatives. She works from our Durham, NC office, where she helps clients like Rotary International, AARP, and Time Life understand the needs and behaviors of their users.

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