Step 1: Explain the purpose of the study

Prior to starting any study, you should be able to explain the reason for conducting the study. What do you hope to learn from the study? For example, suppose you're a cosmetics company and you want to expand your product line to appeal more to members of the Latinx and LGBTQ+ communities. In such a case, you may have several reasons to conduct research; for example:

• To find out which products are popular among consumers in these communities and why.
• To find out how members of these communities feel about different cosmetic lines and why.
• To see how members of these communities respond to your products.
• To see how members of these communities respond to your advertising.

An effective way to explain your reasoning is to engage in landscape analysis—an exercise focused on finding a cohesive and consistent reason for engaging in any endeavor (including research) and pursuing development of a specific product or service. To conduct landscape analysis, answer the following questions:

• What are you building?
• Who are you building it for?
• Why are you building it?
• What core challenges are you looking to solve?
• What is the opportunity? (Have users asked for a solution to a particular problem or have you noticed a gap in the market?)

After answering these questions, you should have a clear idea of what you are building, for whom, and why, and the reason you need to gather additional data to inform your product design process.

Step 2: Establish your inclusion criteria

The next step in conducting research for product inclusion is to choose your inclusion criteria. You must decide which underrepresented populations you want to reach out to with the new product or service. Inclusion criteria include the following:

• Ability
• Age
• Education
• Ethnicity
• Geographic location
• Gender
• Income
• Language
• Occupation
• Race
• Religious beliefs
• Sexual orientation

This is a short list of the many dimensions of diversity. Add to these the intersections of diversity, and the differences among individual users increase exponentially. For example, the needs and preferences of a 30‐year‐old Black attorney of Ethiopian descent who identifies as a woman will differ significantly from those of a 50‐year‐old Black business owner from Jamaica who identifies as non‐binary, even though they are considered to be of the same race. (See Chapter 1 for more about intersectionality.)

If you are struggling to identify populations that may present an opportunity for your product or service, consider taking one of the following steps:

• Conduct broad research across multiple dimensions, and then conduct additional rounds of research on more narrowly defined groups.
• Consult experts within your organization to find out which underrepresented populations they think present the greatest opportunities. For example, ask someone in marketing or sales to share their insights.

Step 3: Build your sample

In research, a sample is a small group that is representative of a larger population. Building your sample involves identifying and gathering the people you want to participate in your study. The process varies based on the source of your study participants (internal, external, online, etc.) and the nature of your study (in‐person interview, national survey, etc.). For example, for an internal study, you may be drawing participants from a pool of volunteers, in which case, you may invite people to participate via email or encourage them to register on your organization's website. If you are conducting a remote study using an online tool, such as UserTesting or Validately, you will input your inclusion criteria, and the service will help to connect you with appropriate study participants.

At Google, one of our user experience (UX) research teams recruits study participants (specifically product participants) online, allowing interested parties to register to become participants. However, this same team realizes that having people register online can make the pool of participants too uniform. To increase the diversity of its research participants, the team drives around in a van to meet people where they live, as described in the nearby sidebar.

Step 4: Choose a research method

After building your sample, choose the research method best suited to the study's purpose. Consider the following options:

• In‐person interviews: Talking with someone face‐to‐face enables you to pick up on subtleties in communication you would otherwise miss (voice tone, facial expressions, body language, etc.). It also provides the opportunity to follow up in real time; for example: “Tell me more about that” or “Why do you prefer this mock to that mock?” The drawbacks of in‐person interviews are that they can be time‐consuming for both researcher and participant, and they require more coordination (location, time, etc.).
• Surveys: The benefits of surveys are that they enable you to reach more people faster and to scale to whatever group you want to include. The drawbacks are that participants may not be giving their full attention (for example, they could be watching TV while completing the survey), you don't have the benefit of nonverbal communication, and your ability to ask follow‐up questions is limited. (However, you can ask participants whether they would mind being contacted after the survey to answer follow‐up questions.)
• Focus groups: Focus groups enable you to get multiple perspectives without having to schedule and conduct one‐on‐one interviews. However, in a group of strangers, participants may not be as forthcoming as in an interview situation. You may also get some people who dominate the conversation and others who agree with the majority even when they feel differently. Be sure to allow the quieter people to speak and draw them into the conversation.
• Remote studies: Remote studies (usually conducted over the Internet) are great for obtaining quick feedback from a diverse pool of users. They are fast and scalable and enable you to focus your research on a specific demographic. However, they are somewhat prone to selection bias because users are often required to use specific devices to participate.

Step 5: Conduct your research

The process of conducting research is beyond the scope of this book and varies according to the chosen method—in‐person interview, remote study, online survey, etc. What is important is that you have the means to collect, record, summarize, and analyze the results, so that you can extract insight to guide your future work. Here are a few suggestions to consider when conducting research specifically in the context of product inclusion:

• Obtain initial feedback as early in the process as possible, during the ideation phase, where feedback often has the greatest impact and requires the least investment to implement.
• Obtain feedback at multiple points in the process, not just at the beginning or just at the end. Teams need time to change course in response to feedback; having feedback throughout the process enables them to make easier, smaller changes in direction.
• Seek feedback from people who represent multiple dimensions of diversity.
• Be sure your researchers and focus group moderators are qualified to conduct research with the participants who meet the inclusion criteria. For example, if you plan to ask questions, have someone who understands the nuances of the group write or at least collaborate on writing the questions.
• If you are conducting a focus group or survey that includes questions, be sure the questions are easy to understand and have them checked by multiple people to identify and eliminate any bias.
• Obtain feedback on every iteration of an idea or product.
• Remain open minded when receiving feedback. Avoid any temptation to discount or ignore feedback that seemingly goes against your assumptions or product roadmap.

For any research involving participants, be sure to specify what information will be gathered and how it will be used and shared. Consult your organization's legal counsel to have them prepare any agreements that participants need to sign, such as consent forms, privacy statements, and more. Prior to the study, inform participants that they will be required to sign certain agreements before they can participate in the study; you want to avoid any surprises for the participants on the day of the study.

Step 6: Share your results

The final step in any research study is to share the results with your team and across your organization. (Remember: before collecting or sharing data or study results, you must have proper consent from participants and sign off from any partners, both internal and external.) After organizing and analyzing your data, create a research paper to present your findings. Include the following details:

• Total number of study participants
• Number of study participants in each demographic
• Questions/issues investigated
• Study design description
• Summary of results
• Conclusions/insights

After documenting your research study and results, you can share your findings with others in your organization in a number of ways, including the following:

• Email your research paper to everyone who may benefit from it internally.
• Create an infographic with a summary of the results and post it in your product team's workspace.
• Create user stories based on your findings, and share them with your team and other people in the organization.
• Use the data as substance for a lightning talk—a 15‐minute or shorter presentation delivered to small groups (see Chapter 8 for more about lightning talks).
• Present the data and your findings at the very beginning of your team's next design sprint—typically a five‐day session for designing, prototyping, and testing new products (see Chapter 8 for more about design sprints).

Remember, ideally, everyone in the organization and certainly everyone on the product team should interact with a variety of users regularly. The closer to users everyone is, the more empathy and understanding is put into the products and services the organization offers. However, depending on the organization's and team's resources, having everyone involved in research is not always possible, so it is important to have a method and the means in place to share the research.