Frames of reference
Centering people’s needs, and even making sure we’re hearing from a diverse group of people isn’t sufficient, because our research and design practices have inequity built in. If we’re not explicitly removing bias, we’re reinforcing it.
So how do we practice centering equity and making this a part of our process? As researchers & stakeholders, we can identify our frames of reference so we can improve the credibility of our evidence. Having a team with varied life experience helps us create more accessible, usable products and services.
Outcome
To start, recognize the power you hold to shape the UX design process. Who controls and influences:
- Identifying research goals
- Determining the process to follow
- Defining priorities and success metrics
- Deciding whose perspectives are included and who else should be involved
From this activity, the whole group should then be primed to bring awareness of our limitations to those conversations.
Method/Process
- Share, in a live human way, the framing for this exercise (e.g. our deck) to ensure everyone gets the concept.
- Customize the questionnaire to your project to make the questions directly connect to the context you’re working in. Consider adding a description/helper text to each question for added context (example).
- Decide by consensus whether to fill out the questionnaire form, or instead to use the questionnaire as a discussion guide. For the latter, skip the next step.
- Share the questionnaire link with everyone, giving plenty of time for folks to consider (and reconsider) each question. Once everyone is done, copy the response graphs somewhere temporary for discussion, and then delete all responses from the form.
- On small teams, it is still possible to identify folks if they are the only one to respond in a way to a question. Discuss this ahead of time with the group to decide how to handle such a scenario, such as not copying the response over at all or deleting it immediately after discussing that point.
- For each question, discuss what frames of reference your team brings to a project, what’s missing or lacking compared to the context, and anything surprising.
Resources
- The deck
- Questionnaire template (copy, do not use directly)
- Example questionnaire