When planning a user study, ethics and mindsets may not be the first things that come to mind. However, it is vital for all researchers to be aware of these important considerations.
The field of psychology has a checkered past, with horrible human experiments conducted without consent that traumatized their participants. While user research is less likely to traumatize people, it can still make them feel invalidated, disrespected, and even insulted. Additionally, it may harm the reputation of your company, which is why we need to talk about ethics.
I also value the scientific attitudes, which I believe are essential to the professionalism of UXR researchers.
Research Ethics
3 Ethical Principles of Design Research
- Respect: We honor participants’ limits and value their comfort.
- Responsibility: We act to protect people’s current and future interests.
- Honesty: We’re truthful and timely in communication.
Practical Considerations During Research
- The fewer people in the field, the better (2 visitors max for regular consumer in-home visits, more is okay if you're sure that the participant would be more comfortable, such as internal interviews). For in-home visits, the participant's consent must be obtained in advance and their comfort respected.
- Introduce team members correctly.
- Avoid giving advice during interviews. We must make the participants' feel fully accepted and understood. Even well-meaning advice reveals the moderator's judgment, and the interviewee may feel degraded. Additionally, any advice will contaminate the data. If the issue is serious enough, give your advice after the interview.
- Do not promise anything that cannot be fulfilled easily.
- Be as transparent as possible: Although not all information can be presented to the participants at the beginning of the study, after the study is completed, we must do our best to communicate all that can be revealed. The participants are (potential) customers, and we must do everything possible to maintain the reputation of our company/team, avoid leaving bad impressions, regret, and feelings of being manipulated or deceived.
- Collect only the data that needs to be collected. Do you best to avoid letting the participants' participation affect them negatively in the future.
- Protect the participants' personal information and provide personal information education to those who would be in contact with the data.
Source:
IDEO_The_Little_Book_of_Design_Research_Ethics (1).pdf
Further Reading: https://ethicaldesignnetwork.com/
Scientific Attitude