Auditing a Study for Recruiting Bias and the Hawthorne Effect

A researcher recruited usability-test participants by posting in the company's internal Slack and asking colleagues to "grab five minutes to try our new feature." Five colleagues from the design and engineering org volunteered. The researcher sat next to each participant during the session, taking visible notes, and told them "this is really important, we need this to go well before launch."

1. Identify every specific bias or pitfall at risk in this setup, and explain the mechanism by which each one would distort the findings.
2. Rewrite the recruiting and session framing to remove as many of these risks as practical.