UserTesting life: Join the club!

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At UserTesting (UT) we have teams and employees all over the U.S. (and a couple in Canada and Morocco!), so we’re always looking for ways to connect everyone and make them feel like one big team no matter who the report to or where they are. What better way to do this than to rally people around their passions and hobbies!? Enter UT Clubs. As a UT employee, if there’s something that you’re passionate about, we probably have a club you can join. And if we haven’t started one yet, you can create one yourself and connect with coworkers with similar interests. So far, we have six UT Clubs with their own formats, cadence of meetings, and budgets to help make our employee experience even better. Check out what UTers are up to when they’re not creating great experiences!

Book Club

Our first club ever was the Book Club. Every month this group reads a new book and then gets together both in-person and over Zoom to discuss. UT not only pays for the book but also feeds the voracious readers a tasty meal at group meetings. Book Club member and Sr. Support Specialist Beth Cobb really appreciated the opportunity to get to know people and read new books,

As a new hire, it’s really helpful to meet people outside of my office. It’s also a chance for me to read books that there’s no way that I would have picked up otherwise. Honestly, I don’t think I would have read one of the four books that we’ve read so far, but I’ve loved every one. The Radium Girls was my absolute favorite!

Dungeons and Dragons Club

Our Dungeons and Dragons Club has also been around for quite some time now. The club’s humans, elves, and dwarfs meet for marathon campaigns on a regular basis. In fact, last year they did a charity stream for a holiday toy drive for a local charity, Sunday Friends, which lasted over 10 hours. Dungeon Master and Support Manager AJ Beahm loves introducing the game to new people,

It’s interesting to have people come out of the woodwork and say that they want to play. Additionally, in Mountain View we play in a shared space where people can walk by and get engaged, which is exciting and unique. Someone might ask ‘what on earth is going on?’ and it’s fun to explain that we’re fighting a dragon. It helps to strengthen the bonds across teams. I’ve been able to make awesome relationships with some of our engineers and remote employees that I wouldn’t have gotten a chance to otherwise know.

Taste of Culture Club

UT has a wonderfully diverse team, and our Taste of Culture Club gives everyone a chance to learn about and share their culture and customs with other members of the company. The club has put on events such as kite making for Uttarayan, an Indian kite flying festival, Chanukah presentations and festivities, Persian culture night, a sushi making class, movie nights, and much more. Current club lead and Support Specialist Jason Hoang remembers his first Taste of Culture meeting,

I went to an Indian culture night in which we watched the Bollywood movie Queen. During the movie our colleague who organized the event would pause the movie and explain things, so it was a chance to learn about the culture and make it relatable. We also had amazing Indian food which was a good way to share a meal and get to know people.

Hearthstone Club

Move over Pokemon, UT employees are collecting Hearthstone these days. Hearthstone is a popular online collectible card video game and, sure enough, we have a club for that too. The club grabs their cards and gets together every other week to play, trade, and enjoy a meal on the company. Hearthstone Club member and UX Researcher Asha Vergis explains what’s so appealing about the club,

My favorite part is when people in the club challenge each other to play against their new decks. It’s always good to get new people to join. Doing an intro and getting people into the game is really fun. We also get remote people to join every meeting, and keep up to date on the newest decks and cards through our Slack channel. Trash talk is a lot of fun. It’s a good chance to talk about stuff that’s not work related. We all work together in some capacity so it’s a joy to bond over things other than work.

Sneakerheads Club

If you’ve ever doubled up on a fly pair of kicks, you’ll be in good company with the Sneakerheads Club. UT Sneakerheads share their love of all things sneakers every month over lunch to chat about the hottest new sneakers that are coming out, interesting documentaries on Sneakerhead culture, and to show off anything new that members have gotten recently. Also, on “Flex Fridays” the team all wear their “heat” into the office. Sr. Designer Darren Wong loves being a Sneakerhead member,

I’ve been able to meet people in Atlanta who I’d never met in real life that I get to connect with. It’s cool to have something outside of work which gets people together and creates bonds. It’s also a way to put feelers out for making an informed decision on what shoes to buy next.

SoleMates Club

Sometimes, you just feel like going for a run! That’s what inspired our newest club, the SoleMates running club. This club connects folks who like to go on impromptu runs together and sponsors our company to join organized runs in our local communities. SoleMates Lead and CS Manager Hilary Lannan loved how easy it was to start a UserTesting club,

I like that I just had this idea and the company said ‘go for it!’ It’s an easy process if you have a passion for something to make it happen. We recently participated in the JP Morgan Corporate Challenge in San Francisco and discovered that we have a top runner from Stanford that ended up coming in 10th place out of 10,500 people!

At UserTesting, there’s a club for that!

We’re always looking to create more ways for people get to know each other on a personal level, and clubs is a really effective way of doing that. If you’re thinking of joining UserTesting and you have a hobby or passion, we’re looking forward to giving you a platform to share it with us!