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Resources for a more inclusive UX research practice

UXinsight’s journey toward creating an Inclusive Research event, part 2

We’re getting ready! Soon we will announce the official program for the UXinsight Unfolds 2021: Making UX Research more inclusive. While planning the event, we learned from many of you in the community ways to get started and continue the work. It has been a journey for us. While making research practice more inclusive can be challenging, there are steps we can take as UX researchers.

Below we share a list of guiding principles and resources compiled from what we’ve learned thus far about inclusion. This list is intended as a starting point for UX professionals who are willing to invest in a more inclusive research practice.

* latest update 21-09-2021

Guiding principles

  • Inclusion is not a project or end-goal, it’s an ongoing (learning) activity.
  • We all have biases and prejudices, that’s ok, we’re human. As long as we are open to reflect, acknowledge, apologize and change. Sometimes this means we need to sit with our discomfort.
  • It’s not enough to have good intentions, we need to proactively take action.
  • Nothing about us, without us. An inclusion / accessibility checklist is a good place to start, but it’s very important to include the people with lived experience in your activities.
  • Solve for one, extend to many. You can’t make products that are the perfect match for all of us. But start by making the perfect match for the people experiencing a mismatch, and then think of ways how others can benefit from the solution.
  • Experiences are intersectional. People never fit one box – for example, an elderly person experiences a loss of sight, hearing and physical strength. People have multiple cultural backgrounds, or ethnicities. We mis-design things if we try to fit people into only one box.

Opening Perspectives on Inclusion

  • Mismatch – How Inclusion Shapes Design by Kat Holmes [book]
  • Diversity wheel – by John Hopkins University [infographic]
  • The Positionality Radar worksheet by Noel & Paiva [infographic tool]
  • So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo [book]
  • Crip camp: a disability revolution by Netflix [documentary]
  • What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World by Sarah Hendren [book]
  • Inclusive Design: Designing for Deaf People Helps Everyone by Marie van Driessche [video]
An image presenting different people with a permanent, temporary, or situational disability. It shows that everyone can have a disability at a certain moment in their live.
A spectrum of permanent, temporary, and situational disabilities (from Microsoft’s Inclusive Design)

Establishing & Running an Inclusive Research Practice

  • Integrating Inclusivity in Your Research by Kat Chiluiza
  • What Did I Miss? The Hidden Costs of Deprioritizing Diversity in User Research by Megan Campos [video]
  • UXR with Participants with Disabilities by Sheri Byrne-Haber
  • Accessible User Research: Learnings from Xbox Research and Design Team
  • Inclusive Research: with people who are deaf and hard of hearing by Antoine Garcia-Suarez
  • Inclusive Co-Design Toolkit for Those with Language Barriers / New Immigrants by Hitomi Yokota [toolkit]
  • Digital Literacy: A Must For Inclusive Research by Rebecca Van Roy [article]

Inclusive Language

  • Inclusive UX Writing by Adobe XD [article]
  • LGBTQ+ Inclusion in Surveys by Mei Ke
  • How (And When) Should We Ask About Ethnicity? Use These Principles for More Inclusive Demographic-Gathering by PeopleNerds [article]
  • Demystifying Disability – What to know, what to say, and how to be an ally by Emily Ladau [book]
  • Deafness & User Experience – A List Apart [article]

Biases & Ethics

  • Coded Bias by Joy Buolamwini [video]
  • Ethics & Power: Understanding the Role of Shame in UX Research by Vivianne Castillo [article]
  • Invited Essay: Learning to Recognize Exclusion by Lesley-Ann Noel, Marcelo Paiva [article]
  • Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez [book]
  • Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps and Biased Algorithms by Sara Wachter-Boettcher [video]
  • The Human Library – Don’t judge a book by its cover [events]

We will continue to update this list, based on others’ input and our own research. Do you have suggestions for Resources you believe could help other UX researchers approach product design in a more inclusive and accessible manner? Email us at info@uxinsight.org.

Karin den Bouwmeester (she/her)

Karin is the founder of UXinsight. With over 20 years of hands-on research experience, she’s determined to help the research community grow to a mature level. She loves to connect UX researchers from all over the world and facilitating user research training and workshops.

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