5 Ways to Advance Your Inclusive Research Efforts

Our guide to reframing how product development teams conduct user research

Human-centered design and product development require a deep understanding of diverse needs, perspectives, and experiences of people. I’ve previously outlined our goal to create inclusive product experiences and how we’ve reframed product research across all of SAP. As part of this process, we created playbooks and tools to empower researchers with everything they would need to know to make inclusive research part of their everyday practice. We also defined some key principles to guide how research happens.

These principles are not a checklist — but rather a way to reframe the way we think about research with people that represent a wide range of global diversity. They will hopefully inspire the kind of intentionality required to help researchers and anyone involved in product creation to uncover their hidden biases and learn new things about the people who use their products. Here are five ways to advance your inclusive research efforts in your product team, and beyond:

1. Be intentional

Inclusive research requires a diverse set of participants, representing a range of backgrounds, abilities, and perspectives. It’s important that the screening criteria reflect the people who will be using the product. This means inviting people to be included in the research who represent a range of disabilities, cultures, regions of the world, educational backgrounds, gender identities, and more. By intentionally involving people who might be otherwise excluded, we can discover blind spots and identify opportunities that we have yet to consider.

2. Research with, not on

It’s important that we rethink how we approach the people that we are including in the research. Moving away from this idea of “participant” to thinking of the people involved in our research as “co-researchers”. This reframing of the relationship can shift the power dynamic in a way that reveals new insights that we would never know to ask about. It also fosters trust and allows us to see the world as they see and experience it — exposing gaps, workarounds, and opportunities that would otherwise go unnoticed.

3. Be adaptive

While we encourage a participatory approach to the research, we’re not suggesting that researchers learn completely new methods. Instead, it’s important that researchers adapt what they do to meet the needs of the people involved in the study. This requires researchers to understand the needs of the people they are trying to learn about prior to initiating the research activities. We recommend doing what we call a pre-session in advance of the research and as part of the planning process. What you learn in the session should help inform how you adapt your research methodology and overall approach to gain the most insight possible from the session.

4. Capture the edges

It’s important to analyze data through an inclusive lens in a way that represents the perspectives and experiences of the diverse range of people involved in the study. Bringing the cross-functional team together to identify patterns and themes across the data can help reduce bias and ground the team in early learning.

5. Get your entire product team engaged

Inclusive research is only as good as the product team’s willingness to take action on the insights generated from inclusive research. Unfortunately, it’s all too common in the tech industry for teams to be working in silos rather than actively collaborating as one team. What we often see are teams dividing up work based on roles, only to come together to “hand-off” their final deliverables at the end of a sprint. This means that teams are often not involved in the research — and only get exposed when the final insights are shared. By this time, the design team may already be down a certain path. There is often little time for feedback or iteration, making teams even more resistant to changes — even when it results in a better outcome. So how do we solve for this? Simply, everyone needs to play an active role in the inclusive research process. That means getting the product team involved in planning the research, conducting the research sessions, and in helping to make sense of the data. Even if some teams can only be involved occasionally throughout the research process, they are much more likely to improve the outcome based on what is learned.

If we want to create products that are truly accessible and usable by everyone, we cannot afford to leave out human diversity in all its forms from the research process. For now, we are just starting to pilot these principles with our research teams around the globe. I look forward to sharing how they continue to evolve going forward in our journey to create products all people love to use.

Ellie Kemery is a Principal Design Research Expert at SAP, where she is advancing a culture of ethical research and inclusive design practices across SAP.

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