Inclusion in user research – who needs to be involved?

In this video, our user researchers discuss inclusive research and recruitment practices.

Inclusion in user research is an active process.

It means actively involving people with a variety of needs and life experiences in your user research, and then actively ensuring that all their needs are considered equally during the service design process.

Inclusion needs to be an active process, because it is very easy for it not to happen without conscious effort.

As humans, we are all susceptible to our preferences and prejudices, and we often find it easier to ‘go with what we know’, which means interacting with people with whom we share a background or similar experiences.

As a user researcher, you might also find it easier to speak to participants who are confident and chatty, as these people are likely to volunteer for user research projects and give you lots of insight during sessions, but this insight will be limited to their experience only. You will miss out on the big picture.

When conducting user research, you must actively work against this instinct and include people of all characters, cultures, and backgrounds, not just those who are familiar to you or who are easy to recruit.

You need to speak to people with a variety of perspectives and needs, so that you can gain a wide-ranging and in-depth understanding of all your users, not just a select few. You must also include people who face certain challenges or barriers to life in the UK, such as:

• a health issue, disability or impairment
• not speaking English as a first language
• lower education or literacy level, including digital literacy (how confident they are using technology)
• lower socioeconomic status

It is important to remember that this is not a ‘check list’ – user researchers need to think about who is likely to be excluded from the service we are building and include them so that they are not excluded. It is not enough just to include a few disabled users and leave it there. We need to consider individual people and their needs and how we can accommodate them in research so that the resulting service meets those needs.

People who face these challenges – and many more besides – need to use government services. Sometimes, they are more in need of these services than other people who do not face these challenges, but you will not know of or fully understand their specific needs as users unless you include them in your user research.

Inclusive research starts with inclusive recruitment – how do we find users?

Inclusive user research means including all types of users in your research so that you can understand the real variety of people who use public services.

You need to understand their circumstances and how they live their lives. Not everyone has strong digital skills or speaks English as their first language. Some people are working two jobs, caring for children, or managing health issues, while others may not have much trust in government services, or feel confident speaking up.

Inclusive user research helps uncover the diverse needs of all these different users. When user research is inclusive, we can move beyond assumptions, and truly understand real people, their needs, and the barriers they face.

Inclusive user research leads to:

• better insights that reflect a wider range of experiences
• a more ethical user research environment, because people feel empowered to speak knowing that they will be heard and respected
• services that work for all users, because they are designed to meet a diverse range of needs
• fairer outcomes, because no one is excluded

In order to achieve this, you need to make sure your participant recruitment is inclusive. This needs to be an active, deliberate process. As with all aspects of user research, you should never just assume what people need – you must hear from them directly, which means that they must be included in your user research.

Inclusive recruitment means deliberately involving people from a wide range of backgrounds and circumstances, including:

• people with low digital confidence
• people who do not speak English as a first language
• people with limited time or unpredictable schedules
• people of different ages, ethnicities, backgrounds, and socioeconomic statuses
• people who have not used your service or anything similar before
• disabled people, and people with different impairments or health conditions

Inclusive recruitment also means using different channels and methods of recruitment to ensure that you are finding the right people. Having a multi-channel approach that includes both offline and online ways to contact people and takes different language or translation needs into account makes it more likely that you will reach a diverse range of participants.

A practical tip to remember in recruitment that you should always be recruiting. Take advantage of opportunities to meet users where they are in the real world, such as local community centres or events. Public research is about going “where the people are” – head out into the community!

Do not just recruit in response to a user research need, but be continuously engaging and recruiting users, creating lists and panels to speed up future activities.

It is also key to build relationships with key organisations, such as charities or other public sector organisations. They can often support your recruitment by relaying your messages, offering to recruit on your behalf, or even helping arrange sessions with their users.

Keep your team updated with what research you are doing and what sort of users you need to talk to – they can also help with finding participants. User recruitment is often the hardest part of a project and can sometimes take longer than you anticipate – the more people who are working on it, the easier it will be to overcome.

For new user researchers, managing relationships with different organisations and creating a base of users for your research is something that comes with time and experience – you will develop your own network as you progress in your career.

However, for inclusive user research, recruitment is just the first step. You will then need to ensure that everyone involved has an equal chance to participate, meaning that you need to plan your user research so that you can accommodate everyone. This could also involve making adjustments to your user research plan to accommodate an individual need that you did not anticipate at first.