Summary
Characteristics like race, ethnicity, gender, and disability status can have a significant impact on how we experience the world, and how the world experiences us. In UX research, diversity is the first thing to vanish from the recruit when the going gets tough; I will talk about what we miss when that happens, and what researchers can do about it in their own practice. This presentation will demonstrate why a diverse recruit is imperative for a strong user research study, provide examples of what we miss when the recruit is homogeneous, and offering tactics for addressing the issue.
Key Insights
-
•
Demographic criteria like race, gender, and socioeconomic status significantly impact user experiences but are often considered less important than visible traits like age or location in research recruitment.
-
•
Homogeneous participant pools (mostly white, middle-class, cisgender individuals) persist because demographic criteria are treated as flexible or optional during recruitment.
-
•
Ignoring demographic diversity risks centering dominant cultural perspectives and missing unique needs, which can limit the effectiveness of research outcomes.
-
•
Explicitly setting non-negotiable demographic quotas (e.g., minimum number of non-white participants) improves recruitment diversity with third-party recruiters.
-
•
Recruiters often default to convenience samples; strong client insistence is required to shift their priorities toward representativeness.
-
•
Diverse research teams can better identify recruitment barriers and help reach underrepresented user populations.
-
•
Case studies in healthcare research demonstrate that racial identity shapes patient experiences in ways unrelated to other factors like profession or age.
-
•
Not knowing what insights are missed by lacking diversity is a critical blind spot in user research.
-
•
Recruiting diverse participants requires going beyond familiar networks, including engaging with specific communities and non-English speakers.
-
•
Purposeful overrepresentation of marginalized groups in research may help correct historical overrepresentation of dominant demographics.
Notable Quotes
"We’re actually talking about increasing the representative numbers for communities who are frequently absent or excluded from research."
"If we just decide to ignore demographics, we’re missing huge swaths of the participant experience and an opportunity to better serve our users."
"Those criteria that have more invisible economic, social, and political structures around them are on the less important end, while visible structures like age are ranked higher."
"The viruses don’t discriminate based on race, but our healthcare system does."
"Recruiters have become conditioned to treat demographic criteria as flexible or optional, and I don’t think they should be."
"If you go into a study knowing that you want to recruit a diverse participant pool, be upfront with the recruiter and push back if they can’t meet those needs."
"We can’t pretend that people’s behaviors and experiences exist separate from the identities that society attaches to them."
"We don’t know what we missed by not yielding demographic diversity — that’s a blind spot in user research."
"Wider audiences equal more dollars — expanding diversity isn’t just ethical, it’s good business."
"Stagnation isn’t good for everyone at best and can actively do a disservice to our users at worst."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"We are witnessing the most rapid loss of biodiversity in human history."
Alex Hurworth Bonnie John Fahd Arshad Antoine MarinDesigning a Contact Tracing App for Universal Access
October 23, 2020
"Investing in new practitioners is mutually rewarding; we learn from their fresh perspectives and reassess what we know ourselves."
Laine Riley Prokay Lisa GordonCarving a Path for Early Career DesignOps Practitioners
September 9, 2022
"TripAdvisor is really nine major business units each thinking like sub companies instead of one end-to-end user experience."
Eniola OluwoleLessons From the DesignOps Journey of the World's Largest Travel Site
October 24, 2019
"You need to learn the vocabulary, tools, and processes your peers know and understand where they are inadequate."
Nathan ShedroffDouble Your Mileage: Use Your Research Strategically
March 31, 2020
"Mobile live captions can caption any sounds around the user in real time, making it a powerful accessibility tool."
Sam ProulxMobile Accessibility: Why Moving Accessibility Beyond the Desktop is Critical in a Mobile-first World
November 17, 2022
"Documentation and making findings visible even without a dedicated research librarian helps maintain program momentum."
Feleesha SterlingBuilding a Rapid Research Program (Videoconference)
May 18, 2023
"We are at an inflection point where what got us here won't get us to a thriving future."
Neil BarrieWidening the Aperture: The Case for Taking a Broader Lens to the Dialogue between Products and Culture
March 25, 2024
"A well framed project is a rare thing — it’s also a creative exercise that unleashes teams’ possibilities."
John DevanneyThe Design Management Office
November 6, 2017
"The most important thing is producing something that gives a perspective nobody else in the organization can bring."
Katy MogalBut Do Your Insights Scale?
March 12, 2021