INCLUSIVE RESEARCH
Design research is often performed with participants that are easy to reach and self sufficient with computers and phones. But these participants are not representative of all your users. Performing research with people with special needs or people who have a language deficiency requires some extra attention.
Adapting your plan
Being more inclusive means performing research with more diverse users. To do this you have to be an emphatic researcher, and be willing to adapt your method or plan.
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At gemeente Amsterdam we wanted to learn more about people with a disadvantage to the digital world such as the elderly, people with a language deficiency, or novice computer users. Would online service work for them at all? Would they need special help?
We set out to find these target users. A home for the elderly allowed us to do our research during a computer class offered to people from the neighborhood. Our plan was to ask these computer class participants to perform some scripted tasks, just like we would do in a regular usability test. But what we had planned just didn't work at all. These participants turned out to be shy and were extremely worried that they would 'fail'.
Only one person was open to letting us observe what he was doing. It was a lesson in emphatic research for us. We had to adjust our plan on the fly. We decided to switch to friendly conversations with them. That made them open up to us more. We were then able ask how they used cell phones or computers. And it became very clear that online service was a bridge too far for them.
With the help of intermediaries
Another adapted research method we used was asking folks whom the hard to reach target groups trust: people they frequently meet. We organized meetings and brainstorms with these intermediaries to learn about the needs of our interest group. Their insights were also helpful. And they provided some innovative solutions when we jointly brainstormed on how to offer online service to users who are less self-sufficient.