JoyR1der Research Studio

Researcher Guide

Everything you need to run a market-research study on JoyR1der — from setting up your workspace to paying your participants.

For the Research Studio portal at research.joyr1der.com

1. What Research Studio is

Research Studio lets you recruit verified, real adults from the JoyR1der community, screen them into a study, run live video research sessions with them, record and observe those sessions, and pay each participant an incentive on completion — all from one workspace. Money flows the opposite way to the rest of JoyR1der: you fund a wallet and participants get paid.

The short version

Create a workspace → fund your wallet → create a project → build a screener → build an audience and fund & go live with a recruitment drive → review & enrol qualified candidates → run sessions in the JoyR1der app → pay the participants who attended → review results & recordings.

2. How it fits together

Object	What it is
Workspace	Your research organisation. Holds the shared wallet, KYC, team seats (Owner / Manager / Analyst / Client) and every project.
Project	One study. Groups its screener, recruitment, roster, documents, consent, sessions, recordings and report.
Screener (questionnaire)	The questions that qualify a candidate for a project. Publish it before you can recruit against it.
Recruitment drive	A screener + an audience + a participant target + funding. Surfaces the screener to matching JoyR1der users.
Candidate → Participant	Someone who took the screener. Qualified candidates verify their ID and sign consent, then enrol onto the roster as participants.
Session	A live, private, roster-gated video research session. Not a JoyR1der "event" — it never appears in For You or Discovery.
Recording	A session recording. It belongs to your workspace — it is never published as anyone's content.

3. Getting started & funding

Sign in or sign upUse your JoyR1der account — email and password, or Continue with Google or Apple. New to JoyR1der? Choose Sign up on the sign-in page (or continue with Google or Apple): you confirm you're 18 or older and agree to the JoyR1der Terms and the Researcher Terms, and you're in — no app needed.

Check your ID, then create your workspaceCreating a Research workspace needs a one-time government ID check for you as its Owner; the dialog says so up front, and its price, or that it's free for you, is shown before you start. The check takes you to our ID partner and back — what you typed is kept and the dialog reopens when you return. The same check also covers an advertiser account. As the Owner you accept the Researcher Terms and the Data Processing Agreement for your organisation when you create it, and again whenever either changes (until you do, the workspace can't start or fund recruitment, add funds or pay for transcription). The same login can also run advertiser campaigns — the two are kept separate.

Fund your walletOn the workspace home, click Add funds. Pick a preset or a custom amount (minimum $5) and pay by card. Back from the payment page, the home screen confirms it and updates your balance as soon as the payment lands. Funds sit in your shared workspace wallet.

Everyone you recruit is ID-checkedPeople pass their own ID check before they can enrol in a study you recruit for.

Roles

Owner can do everything, and is the only one who moves money: adding funds, funding a drive or transcription, and billing details. Manager runs studies — projects, questionnaires, recruitment drives, sessions, documents and consent — completes (pays) participants from a funded drive, plays raw recordings and, like the Owner, sees Money (wallet activity, drive statements and invoices). Analyst reads studies, candidates, results and the list of recordings (playing a recording is for Managers and Owners), never the wallet. Client is view-only for your own customers: sessions, the recording list and each project's study report, with no money figures and no actions. An action above your role is shown greyed out with who can do it. Switch workspace in the menu changes which workspace you're acting in, and anyone but the Owner can Leave workspace there too.

4. Building a study

New here?

On the Projects screen choose Explore a demo study (top right, or on the empty screen) to drop a fully-authored example (screener, consent, a recruitment drive and a scheduled session) into your workspace. Like a new drive, it needs the workspace Owner to have accepted the current Researcher Terms and DPA first. It's for exploring only: its drive is marked Demo and is never offered to real participants (and can't be funded), you can't start another drive on it, and nobody is ever added to its session. Poke around, then delete it from the project's menu (Delete demo) when you're done. A demo that was funded, that someone joined or took part in, or whose session ran or holds a transcription deposit, can't be deleted — set it to Closed instead, like any real study.

Create a projectFrom Projects, create a project and give it a name — you're taken straight into it, where a short checklist walks you through the remaining setup. Edit its name and description, or change its status, later from the project menu; the description shows at the top of the project.

Build a screenerIn Questionnaires, start blank or from a template (replace anything in [brackets] with your own wording — you can't publish until you do). The builder has three panes — a question list (drag, or use Move up / Move down), the editor, and a live participant view — plus undo/redo; on a narrow window you switch between them. Tick which answers qualify a candidate: each question with a ticked answer is a Gate, and gated questions are always required. Save it as a draft while you work — the builder stays open, and you can re-open, edit or delete a draft any time. When it's ready, publish it. A published screener is locked: open it to view it, duplicate it to make a new version, or archive it when you're done (drives already using it keep running). If no answer is ticked, everyone who answers qualifies — the builder asks before publishing one like that.

Add documentsOn the project, upload stimulus, briefs or notes for your team. Documents are researcher-only — sending pre-reads to participants isn't available yet, so share stimulus live in the session.

Review consentEvery project starts with JoyR1der's participant consent (recording, observers, the biometric release, withdrawal) — consent can't be switched off, and that section can't be edited. Add your own study-specific terms as text, or upload your own PDF: participants sign JoyR1der's section and yours together. Participants sign the current version before they can enrol; any change to your terms (or to JoyR1der's section) makes a new version, and everyone enrolled must sign it again before their next session. The roster shows who has signed and who needs to re-sign. Give the project an optional name participants see: they're shown that (or "a paid research study") and your workspace's name before the screener — never your internal project title.

Restrict a project (optional)By default everyone in the workspace can open every project. On a project, a Manager or Owner can switch on Restrict access to named members: then only Owners, Managers and the people you list can open it. Access is in or out — a listed person sees the project with their usual workspace role. Restricting doesn't turn off guest links you've already shared (live observer links and shared results), so you're offered a one-tap Revoke all. Someone who leaves the workspace loses their listings. Access history on the same card records who restricted or opened the project and who added or removed whom, and when; nobody is notified of these changes.

5. The Audience Builder

The Audience Builder is a visual page for shaping who your study reaches. As you pick dimensions, a live reach gauge shows roughly how many verified adults match. An audience of fewer than 25 adults can't be launched: it would let answers be traced to individual people, so the drive can't be saved or funded until you widen it.

Dimension	Status
Sex	Active
Location (country)	Active
Near a place (geo-radius)	Active — within N km of a city; matches participants who share their location
Community status (host / promoter / creator)	Active — target only, exclude, or any
Interests	Active — pick from JoyR1der's topic list, and narrow a topic to sub-topics if you like. Matches people interested in any topic you pick: they chose it on their profile, went to events in it, or browse it (the same interest profile ads use, refreshed daily — and at once when someone switches personalisation off). Someone who keeps hiding a topic doesn't count for it, and people who turned off personalised recommendations don't count for any. For the first five topics you pick, the builder shows how many people each reaches and through which of those signals — rounded to 10, and only above 25 people. You can target up to 30 topics
Age	Not offered — everyone is a verified adult (18+); we don't hold participants' exact age, by design

Tip

All participants are verified adults (18+). If the reach gauge flags your audience as too narrow (under 25 adults), widen a dimension — the drive can't launch until you do. It protects participant privacy and makes your target fillable. Viewing habits can be targeted once the daily viewing index has been built. If your target is larger than the estimated reach, the builder says so — the drive probably won't fill. Type the target straight in (up to 100,000) or use − / +. The gauge is an upper bound, and if it couldn't refresh (for example after many changes in an hour) it tells you the number may be out of date.

6. Recruiting participants

Build the driveFrom a project, tap Recruit (or open Recruitment and pick the project) and start a new drive: give it a name only your team sees (for example "Wave 1 — Auckland"), choose a published screener, build your audience and set how many participants you want. It is saved as a draft — nobody is offered it yet. Each drive card shows its name, screener, audience, target, places left and state: Draft, Live, Full, Closed or Demo.

Fund & go liveThe workspace Owner sets the per-participant incentive and funds the drive from the wallet. This holds (incentive + platform fee) × your target and makes the drive live. Participants are only ever offered a funded drive, so everyone who enrols has their incentive held from the moment they join. If the wallet is short, the dialog says by how much and takes you to Add funds.

Review candidatesMatching JoyR1der users take your screener (once each). Qualified candidates appear in Candidates by name or @username, with their screener answers. People who answer and don't qualify aren't listed — Candidates shows only how many there were, and their answers count only in the Results totals. When your qualified pool reaches the target the drive turns Full: nobody new is offered it, but everyone who qualified can still finish enrolling, and you pay, release and close as usual. To recruit more, the Owner uses Raise target — the added places' incentive + fee are held from the wallet and the drive goes live again. A qualified person who hasn't enrolled within 7 days loses their place so someone else can take it (a Full drive with a free place goes live again by itself). A draft's target can be changed either way before it's funded; a funded drive's target only goes up.

They enrolA qualified candidate verifies their ID and signs your consent, then joins the project roster as a participant. Members of your own workspace can't take part in its studies, and accounts our moderators have blocked aren't offered them.

7. Running a session

Schedule it in the portalOn the project, New session asks first: Group session or 1:1 interview. Every session has a time, a length and an optional guide; times are entered and shown in your own time zone.

Group session — enrolled participants (current consent signed, account in good standing, not withdrawn) are added automatically up to the session's limit (50 unless you set 1–200); anyone beyond it goes on the session's waitlist in enrolment order and moves up as soon as a place frees. Someone left off because the consent changed is added as soon as they re-sign. Everyone on a group session sees and hears each other.
1:1 interview — one participant with the moderator (backroom observers and guest links still work). Either pick the participant from your enrolled roster, or open time slots for participants to book: choose days, start times, a length and a moderator, and every combination becomes a slot. Enrolled participants without an interview are told and pick a time in the app — first come, first served. Each person can hold one upcoming interview per study unless you tick Allow more than one interview per person. Participants can cancel or move their interview until 2 hours before it starts (someone booking a time closer than that is warned first); after that only you can change it. If someone cancels an interview you assigned to them, it becomes an open slot. Each interview's moderator and the person who made it get an in-app notice (no push) whenever a participant books, moves, cancels or declines one. In Add interview slots you can give some slots a different moderator; times already past are left out and you're told. Enrolled participants hear that times are open at most once a day per study, and a closed study offers no times. Slots nobody books close by themselves when their time comes. When you move a booked interview, the new time is held for that participant until they answer or it starts. A moderator can't be booked on two sessions at once — creating, moving or handing over a session that would clash is refused.

Everyone put on a session gets a notification that opens it, showing its time in their own time zone; everyone on it — participants, observers and you — gets one reminder 15 minutes before.

Change it laterFrom the session's People, time & moderator button (or the project's Interview schedule): Reschedule (everyone on it is told; a booked interview's participant must accept the new time, or it becomes an open slot for someone else), Edit the title, length or a group's limit (raising it moves people up from the waitlist), Cancel session (everyone is told; an interview's participant can book another time), add or remove a participant (someone removed leaves the room at once and stays enrolled in the study; time they already spent in a live session still counts as attending, so they are paid for it), and change the moderator. A session that is still "upcoming" 24 hours after its time is closed by itself.

The Interview scheduleThe project's Interview schedule lists every interview slot by day: Open, Booked (with whom), Awaiting answer (moved, not yet accepted), and once it's over Attended or No-show. Add slots opens more times; each row can be rescheduled, cancelled, handed to another moderator, assigned to a participant or freed.

Host it in the JoyR1der appOpen the JoyR1der mobile app, go to your research session, and take it live. The first time, you accept the Researcher Terms. Participants and observers get a "your session is live" alert that opens the session; observers already waiting on the session screen join by themselves, and a waiting participant's screen says It's live — tap Join. Before a participant joins they see a notice that the session is recorded, your organisation, how many people are observing and each observer's name — they can decline if they know someone, and they are not connected (or recorded) until they tap Join. Participants join into a clean, non-monetised session.

Check the recordingThe REC badge shows only while the session is really being recorded. If the recording can't start you're told straight away: Try again, or Go ahead unrecorded — participants then see Not recorded and are told so, and they're told again if recording starts later. You can retry any time by tapping Not recorded. Whether to pay participants of an unrecorded session is your call, as always.

ModerateUse your interview guide, mark key moments with the marker button (add a label if you like — the moment is the tap, not when you save), and chat privately with observers in the backroom. Backroom messages show each person's name only if they show it publicly, otherwise their @username.

End itEnd session closes the session for everyone at once: participants get a thank-you screen, observers and guests are disconnected, and the recording stops. If you lose your connection you can rejoin — or end it straight from the waiting screen; if you're gone for 10 minutes the session ends by itself (participants still see the thank-you screen, and you're told — paying them stays your decision). A session also ends by itself 2 hours after its scheduled length has run out, and a recording stops at its maximum length (6 hours) and isn't restarted — you're told either way.

Invite observersFrom the session's People, time & moderator button, invite a client by JoyR1der username or email as a silent backroom observer — they get a notification, the session appears in their research sessions in the app, and they watch live and chat only with you, never the participants. Anyone outside your workspace agrees to keep the session confidential before they can watch. Remove an observer there at any time; they drop out at once. Observers can read the backroom only while the session runs — afterwards the history stays with your workspace. Someone who leaves your workspace loses any observer seats.

Guest linksFor a client without a JoyR1der account, open the session's Guest observer links (the link button): New link asks who it is for — one named person: enter their name and organisation, which participants are shown before they join — then makes the link and copies it, Copy re-copies a working one, and Revoke stops it — anyone watching through it is removed from the session at once. A link is valid for 7 days and only works while the session is live; the guest agrees to keep the session confidential before watching, and one who opens it early waits and joins by themselves when it starts. An old link made without a name no longer opens — make a new one. Each link lets up to 3 people watch at the same time — a fourth is told the link is full and can try again when someone leaves; make another link if more people need to watch. Analysts see the list with the links hidden; only Managers and Owners can copy, make or revoke them.

Look backManagers and Owners can open any session in the project to see what happened: who moderated, when it started and ended (and why), every marked moment — with Play from here once the recording is ready — and the whole backroom conversation.

Change the moderatorThe moderator must be an Owner or Manager of the workspace who has passed an ID check. Hand a session to someone else from People, time & moderator (or a row of the Interview schedule). If a moderator leaves the workspace or stops being a Manager, their upcoming and live sessions pass to the Owner straight away — the Owner is told and can hand them on to any Manager. If the workspace is closed, its live sessions end and upcoming ones are cancelled.

8. Recordings

When a recorded session goes live, it is captured automatically (see step 5 above if it can't start). Recordings appear in the project's Recordings section. Playing one is for Managers and Owners: each play opens a private, expiring link and is written to the project's Access log. Recordings belong to your workspace — they are never published as the moderator's content, never sold, and never surface in For You, Discovery or the Store.

9. Paying participants & reporting

Check attendanceEach enrolled participant shows whether they attended a session: at least half its scheduled length or 10 minutes, whichever is less, while the session was live.

PayIn Candidates, Pay attendees pays everyone enrolled who attended. Anyone with no recorded attendance (for example a survey-only study) is paid one by one with Pay, after you confirm. The incentive goes from the drive hold to the participant's cashable Earnings and we tell them. A participant is never paid twice, and an account our moderators have blocked can't be paid — their share stays on the drive.

Release a no-showSomeone who enrolled but attended nothing can be released: they aren't paid, they come off your upcoming sessions, and we tell them. Anyone who attended a session must be paid. Attendance is recorded when a participant leaves the room, so you can't release someone while they're in a session, while they're still connected, or for 15 minutes after a session ends. If attendance still arrives after a release, the row shows they're owed and Pay pays them — from the drive, or from your wallet if their share already came back to you.

Read the resultsThe Results view shows each screener question as bars (with how many people answered), an NPS score with promoters, passives and detractors, and up to 50 free-text answers per question. Totals include everyone who answered; free-text answers come only from people who qualified. Export CSV gives a table of your qualified candidates — one column per question, with readable answers (several choices are joined with “;”) — for your own analysis. The project report shows incentives paid and the platform fee separately.

Share the resultsManagers and Owners can Share a read-only results page by private link: it needs no login, expires after 30 days (the link list shows Expires or Expired), and can be revoked any time. Add an executive summary and a comment on each question with Summary & comments. The shared page never shows free-text questions (their answers can identify people), and until at least 5 people have responded it shows only your summary, your comments and the number of responses.

Close the driveClosing a drive stops recruitment and refunds the surplus to your wallet. The share of every enrolled participant who isn't paid yet stays held, so you can still pay them — or release them, which returns their share (never money the drive still needs for people who attended). Closing a project closes its drives the same way, after asking. A settlement statement records it all — what was held, what went to participants and in fees, what came back, and anything still held for enrolled participants, which is paid or released later and added to it. You'll find it under Money › Drive statements.

Money: wallet activity, statements and invoices

The Money section (in the menu, or Money on the home screen's wallet card) is for the workspace's Owner and Managers — Analysts and Clients don't see it. It has three tabs:

Wallet activity — every top-up, drive and transcription hold, and every return to the wallet, newest first. Participant incentives and the platform fee are paid from each drive's hold, so they show in the drive's statement. If your workspace is also a JoyR1der Ads account, its ad spending is listed in the Ads portal instead.
Drive statements — one settlement statement per closed drive: what was held when you funded it, paid to participants (how many × the incentive), the platform fee, and refunded to your wallet. The parts are checked against the amount the drive was funded with, so they always add up — if they ever don't, the statement says so and asks you to contact us. Download PDF saves a copy. Drives still running show their figures so far.
Invoices — an invoice for every top-up of the wallet (a tax invoice when VAT applies) and any credit notes, each with Download PDF. An invoice is issued at payment from your Billing details at that moment and never changes afterwards, so keep them up to date before you add funds. It says how you paid — the card's brand and last four digits, or the payment method — with the Stripe reference. If your legal name uses a script other than the Latin alphabet, add a Name in Latin script in Billing details: the PDF shows it (with a pointer to your registered name) where its font can't draw the original.

Only the Owner and Managers see invoices and the wallet history — in Research Studio and, for a workspace that also advertises, in the JoyR1der Ads portal. When a workspace closes, its last Owner can still read its drive statements and invoices: Closed workspaces (the box icon on the workspace list).

Every participant is a verified adult who signs your project's consent before enrolling and holds a signature of its current version before every session. Before they join, they see a notice that the session is recorded and who is observing — they are not connected (or recorded) until they tap Join — and in the session they are told whether it is really being recorded, again whenever that changes. Consent covers recording, biometric data, named live observers, overseas processing, analysis, the incentive, and the right to withdraw. Participants can withdraw in the app at any time: they are paid in full for any session they attended, the rest of their share comes back to you (if they withdraw during a session or just after one, their share stays held until their attendance is in — then JoyR1der pays or releases them automatically, or you can do it from the roster), and they are taken out of a session that is running when they withdraw. They can ask for their recordings to be deleted — the roster shows who withdrew. As the moderator you accept the Researcher Terms before you can record. The full documents are published here:

11. FAQ

Do participants pay to join?

No. You fund your wallet; participants are paid an incentive when you confirm they took part.

Will my sessions show up publicly on JoyR1der?

No. Research sessions are a separate, private object — they never appear in For You, Discovery, or anyone's profile, and recordings are never turned into content.

Can I edit a screener after publishing it?

A published screener is locked so live recruitment stays consistent. Duplicate it to make an editable new version — the library shows how many drives use each version and what it was copied from. Archive the versions you no longer need (Show archived brings them back).

Can I build a survey to run in a session?

Not yet. Questionnaires are screeners: they qualify people for a recruitment drive. Ask in-session questions live during the session.

What happens to money I don't spend?

Closing a drive refunds what isn't needed to your workspace wallet. Money held for enrolled participants you haven't paid yet stays held until you pay or release them.