Written by Josephine Bale - Hireup lead product designer
When I pondered the question “how do you research and design inclusively?” I wasn’t sure how to answer it without saying “it follows the same basic principles as facilitating any research or design process.” At Hireup, designing means designing inclusively. Inclusive design is embedded in our day-to-day, because it relates directly to our purpose: to enable the pursuit of a good life for everyone.
In general, inclusive research and design can be a big topic. I try my hardest to not overthink it and remember that the same rules apply when researching or co-designing with anyone.
The concept of universal design sums that up well. It’s the idea that design should create an environment that can be accessed, understood and used to the greatest extent possible by all people regardless of their age, size, ability or disability. This means not only thinking about whose perspectives are included in your design outputs and practice, but whose perspectives are missing. When you start designing ‘with’ and not ‘for’ your users, you also start to consider how to best set up your research and design activities so that anyone can participate, to help inform your view.
I’ve learnt a lot of things while I have been doing research and design activities at Hireup. Here are some lessons I’d like to share. For example, when facilitating user testing sessions (either face-to-face or remote), I:
- Take the time to plan the session out carefully before it starts. Don't just rock up. Be prepared for things to go differently from what you planned and be ready to adapt.
- Find out people’s device preferences or what someone’s "usual" digital habits are. This lets you know what technology they feel the most comfortable using, and helps to prevent any technical mishaps during the session, so you can focus on the testing! This particularly helps when facilitating a remote session, where you may not have direct access to the participant’s device. Also, make sure that the technology you're using to help facilitate the test is accessible (like, Zoom for example).
- Keep in mind how the participant prefers to communicate. Be prepared to remove or reduce your reliance on body language to communicate. Alternatively, don’t assume that participants will only want to communicate through spoken responses during the session. Provide the ability for participants to respond in writing, drawing or in a way that works for them.
- Break down tasks into smaller pieces. This means your activities won’t rely on processing large amounts of information or using short term memory.
- Make sure to have some additional time to debrief with participants or a subject matter expert. This will help to unearth insights from user interviews and testing data.
- Try to know the prototyping tools well. Some of them don't do a good job of simulating a diverse range of accessible experiences (like the experience of accessing content via a screen-reader for example). Adapt your tooling to suit what you want to test, and the needs of the participants.
- Give participants the space to struggle through the designs to better identify where the improvements are needed. Try not to interject to help straight away. When people are struggling, ask them to explain out loud what they're thinking the whole time, so that you know what's going through their mind. Ask what they'd expect to be able to do instead. This will help with knowing what to do to improve the solution. Remind participants that there's no right way to complete the activity and you're more interested in what they think.
So, to make an experience as accessible as possible, it’s important to create accessible research or design activities that anyone can participate in, to help inform your view. I've found that when you create a universal research and design process, you also find yourself with some unique insights into your product that you may not have received if you didn’t. At Hireup, our community gives us some of the most incredible and useful insights from their experiences. It’s the very thing that has helped shape every decision we make as a product team.
