The participant portal

The portal is what a participant goes through to record for one of your projects. They open a link or scan a QR code, and the portal walks them from a welcome screen, through consent and a mic check, into recording, and out the other side. There’s no account and nothing to install

• it runs in a phone or laptop browser. As a host you don’t record through the portal so much as shape it; everything below is configured in the portal editor.

You get a participant in two ways, both pointing at the same place: a link you share, or a QR code you print or project. The portal is per language - share a link in the participant’s language and the whole flow appears in the right one.

What a participant does#

1. Start. A few onboarding cards - welcome, instructions, and the consent and legal text (with a link to the privacy statement), all written by you. If you’ve asked for it, this is where they fill in a name and/or email. Then a language choice, if you offer more than one.
2. Mic check. A quick check that the right microphone is picked up and the level is healthy, so nobody records five minutes of silence.
3. Record. They record their contribution, with a live level meter and pause / resume / stop. Audio uploads in small pieces as they speak (see recording).
4. Type instead. Anyone who’d rather not speak can write their contribution as text and have it treated the same way.
5. Refine. After recording they can review their segments and choose which to keep, so a fumbled start doesn’t have to make the transcript.
6. Verify. If you’ve enabled it, they’re shown what dembrane drew from their conversation and can approve, reject or modify it - keeping the participant, not the model, in charge of how they’re represented.
7. Finish. A closing message you wrote, and - depending on your settings - the offer of a report and a chance to subscribe to updates.
8. Report. An optional summary of their own contribution. See your report for the participant’s view.

The portal asks for nothing a participant doesn’t have to give: no sign-up, no password, a name or email only if you switched it on, and consent taken explicitly before anyone records. Transcripts can be anonymised; how the data is handled is in data ownership & compliance.

Ready Check Go (tell participants before they record)#

A handful of things make the difference between a clean recording and a lost one:

• Be on good wifi or 5G.
• Allow microphone access when prompted.
• Keep the screen on. A black screen means no recording. A well-charged phone is less likely to sleep.
• Turn on Do Not Disturb - better privacy, fewer interruptions.

Related#

• The portal editor - where you configure everything above.
• Recording - the capture mechanics behind step 3.
• Transcription - what happens to the audio afterwards.
• Participant guides: what to expect, recording your conversation, refining & verifying, your privacy & your data.