While working on the rapid ideation project, I began studying the importance of ethics in research and the various methods that are applied by myself, my teams, and other practitioners I work and collaborate with.
As a practising UX designer, I’ve mostly been restricting myself to using non–invasive and quick methods of testing and validation — moderated interviews, questionnaires, Treejack, diary studies. I still follow Jacob Nielsen’s (1997) advice and only use focus groups to uncover what the customers want, not to assess interactions.
I never got the opportunity to use complex equipment to test emotional perception or evaluate usability with high precisions, using ECG or and eye tracker.
Validating the RI Project
For the current rapid ideation session, I am somewhat restricted by the consequences and the planned outputs:
- Due to the pandemic, I am not allowed to interact in a group of more than 2 people, myself included, so I will not be able to conduct in–person sessions;
- My board game was initially set to be a physical artefact, so testing it remotely will not be possible;
- I would either have to “digitalize” the product, or find a way of gathering qualitative data from the testing.
While in–person interviews and focus groups don’t seem to be feasible, I am tempted to use Diary Study as a mean of testing the product.
I would produce 3 copies of the board game and ask my friends from different walks of life (a fresh graduate, a young father, an experienced exec) to try it out and record their thoughts and feelings throughout the experiment.
Diary study, however, is likely to require an extremely high fidelity of the product, and will take a few weeks to complete (Salazar 2016). As an alternative method, I could revert to a Cognitive Walkthrough which promises a less invasive and time–consuming testing process, but still yields great results and provides insights on usability (The Interaction Design Foundation).
Ethics and research
Researching the Facebook’s highly unethical “violation of the rights of research subjects” (Caplan, Seife 2014) made me think about my own practice and the way I communicate with the subjects of my research — whether in–person or online.
I always start by making sure the participant is aware of the context of the study, the goals, and the requirements. I set the timeframe and make sure to include the passage about the data privacy — how the information they are about to share will not be openly available to anyone outside the design team, especially if the recording (with the subject’s permission) takes place. Here, however, I have to point myself to the fact that often during the interviews, I make sure the participant is aware that the session is being recorder, but don’t ask for explicit consent — I should make sure to include asking for a permission: “Are you comfortable with the session being recorded?” vs “For your information, the session is being recorded”.
Watching the video by Alcwyn Parker made me recall the studies I had previously conducted, alone or with the team. For one of the report, we concealed the identities of the participants and used emojis to represent their personas: this way, the report could circulate openly without the fear of any participant’s private information being revealed.
Assessing the risk
Having a perception that UX a purely benign is deceptive and dangerous: like any other research, UX studies may involve a certain amount of risk to the participants and the facilitators.
I was quite surprised to discover that the history of the research ethics dates all the way back to 1620, when Francis Bacon published The Novum Organon, in which he claimed that any research should benefit humanity. David Resnik (2021) describes a multitude of occasions of the violation of the basic principles of the research ethics.
While some of said violations are truly despicable and borderline criminal, others leave a lot to think and dispute about. For instance, Robert Millikan’s study of oil drops to determine the charge of an electron brought him the Nobel Prize in 1923. Only later, the researchers discovered that Millikan did not mention hiw student, Harvey Fletcher, as an author on the paper, despite Fletcher’s important contributions to the designs of said experiment.
This lead me to think whether I give enough credit to the creative teams I am working with, and whether their names should appear more often in my online publications, including this particular journal. I shall ensure that every time I reflect upon my past experience, I mention those whose contribution helped me achieve the goal, one way or the other.
Challenge Activity
This week, we were tasked with analysing the three scenarios and validating whether said scenarios are considered high, medium, or low risk studies.
Scenario 1
A researcher plans to interview eight artists / curators / designers for her thesis. She offers a letter of introduction about the project, gains written informed consent for the interview from each interviewee, later checks the contents of the transcription with each interviewee, allows the interviewee to withdraw comments / approve the interview record. The interviews will be used as attributed statements within the thesis. A recognised approach from oral history / social sciences / ethnography / art and design criticism and history is part of the methodology. The interviews will involve travel in the UK and abroad, the researcher has discussed her travel plans and personal safety with her supervisors.
Seems to represent the medium risk group: individuals and involved, but well-informed, certain risk is definitely present. The topics don’t seem to be sensitive to deem it as high-risk, and since no direct contact with human tissue and animals is described, it would be safe to assume that the project will receive a green light, considering how well-prepared the facilitator is.
Scenario 2
A researcher plans to interview around 30 producers of legitimate graffiti at the Southbank Undercroft. Participants were to be interviewed about their opinions and ideas regarding activities and future possibilities for the Undercroft, and also where relevant, their own graffiti habits and key trends in graffiti practices.
A high-risk research: the intention is to ask about the participants’ past projects, which may involve illegal activities. The researcher may need to make sure they keep the identities of the participants protected (which will be admittedly tough to do, considering the graffiti at the Southbank Undercroft were legitimate, hence the personal particulars of the artists are likely to be at some authority’s disposal), and have a mitigation plan in case of a data breach (which will also be hard to implement, considering the participants may admit having participated in illegal activities).
Scenario 3
The research, for a practice-based PhD, involves engaging online presences in social networking sites under a pseudonym. It aims to explore the ways in which identity is constructed online. The research is such that it cannot be revealed in advance to those involved. The core of the research involves developing a community of online presences into a community of offline friends.
It is likely that in order to facilitate said research, the practitioner will have to infiltrate a social network under a fake name, build a network of real people, and convince them to share their personal information with them (aka befriend), all without anyone giving their consent. Is any data gathering involved? If so, who will have access to the data? It looks like a high-right researched concealed as a low-risk desk study.
References
NIELSEN, Jacob. 1997. ‘Focus Groups in UX Research: Article by Jakob Nielsen’. Nielsen Norman Group [online]. Available at: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/focus-groups/ [accessed 9 Nov 2021].
SALAZAR, Kim. 2016. ‘Diary Studies: Understanding Long-Term User Behavior and Experiences’. Nielsen Norman Group [online]. Available at: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/diary-studies/ [accessed 9 Nov 2021].
‘How to Conduct a Cognitive Walkthrough’. 2021. The Interaction Design Foundation [online]. Available at: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/how-to-conduct-a-cognitive-walkthrough [accessed 9 Nov 2021].
CAPLAN, A, SEIFE, C. 2014. ‘Facebook experiment used Silicon Valley trickery‘. NBC News. Available at: http://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/opinion-facebook-experiment-used-silicon-valley-trickery-n144386 [accessed 11 July 2014].
RESNIK, David B, Ph.D. 2021. ‘Research Ethics Timeline’. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences [online]. Available at: https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/resources/bioethics/timeline/index.cfm [accessed 14 Nov 2021].