Your participants are also human-beings
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By Dennis Nordstrom in General Published: Monday, 01 December 08 - 10:32 PM (GMT) Last Updated: Monday, 01 December 08 - 10:55 PM (GMT) |
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For a while I have been wondering how to externalise some of the tacit principles of respect for participants, which I try to uphold when doing user-research.
I recently came across a post on the Boxes and Arrows board, where Dana Chisnell has explained some of these principles in a better way than I could have. Especially she brings the subject of "dissing your participants" to attention and gives 5 great signs for " when you are dissing your participants". I have listed these five headings below. Elaborate explanations to each of the headings can be found in the post by Dana Chisnell.
Five signs that you are dissing your participants.
1) They seem interchangeable to you.
2) You’re focused on the demographics or psychographics.
3) Participants are just a way to deliver data.
4) You don’t think about the effort it takes for a person to show up in your lab.
5) You don’t consider that these people are your customers and this is part of their customer experience.
I find these particularly helpful, especially when it comes to stakeholders and explaining the purpose and the context of user-research to stakeholders. This is definitely a post that will go in my "Managing Stakeholders - Bible".
I can only recommend everyone here to read the full post, and use these principles as a way to remember that your participants are human-beings and deserves to be treated that way.
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