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With the exception of Behavioural Mapping and Surveys, all the ethnographic techniques in this toolkit require the direct participation of our users. We’ve always provided incentives for this, and since 2018 it’s been the policy of Information Services to pay students an hourly rate of £15 for their time. 

In practice, it’s not an hourly rate so much as the amount each fieldwork participant earns. Each session of fieldwork with an individual user takes around one hour: we wouldn’t expect to keep a student for longer than that, and if we only spent 45 minutes with them we would still pay them for the full amount. So it’s straightforward to work out the costs of recruiting students your for a UX project - if you require 5 you need to set aside budget £75; if you require 15 students you’ll need £225, and so on. 

The £15 rate does not apply to staff. Staff can be extremely valuable participants in UX fieldwork - academic staff, non-academic staff and indeed our own Information Services staff. We do not pay staff by the session however, as they’re already earning money for their time from their salaries. Needless to say, any staff participation in fieldwork is entirely voluntary and should happen during the staff’s staff member’s regular working hours rather than their own time. 

If your project also involves recruiting members of the public (as the 2018/19 YorSearch Improvement Project did, for example, as the National Railway Museum shares our catalogue) they should be paid at the same £15 rate as students.