If Maslow had made a hierarchy for user research needs, ethics would probably land somewhere near the top. Ethics usually only come into question for people who do research after some trial, and more importantly, error–ethics are only decided after someone gets hurt.
And as UX research becomes more embedded within product organizations and research becomes more democratized, you’ll likely find that while you technically can conduct research without knowing the ethical best practice, you definitely shouldn’t.
Read more about this topic in our newest UX Research Field Guide chapter, Ethical Guidelines for Research
We’ve created a templated quick-start guide to pre-research, to ensure all people who are fielding research can do so with an eye to proper ethical best practices. Feel free to download and work with your legal team to adapt the template to the specific needs and use cases of your organization.
This template includes checklists for:
- Informed content
- Data privacy and security
- Legal compliance
- Participant well-being
- Ethical design and respectful research
- Bias reduction
Nearly three-fourth of participants in our State of User Research 2024 survey said the responsibility of teaching others about research best practices falls to the dedicated Researcher–even when an organization has a research operations function. We know researchers have other responsibilities, and you don’t want to waste any more time on governance and admin than you have to.
The fastest way to recruit and manage participants for research
That’s why User Interviews’s Research Hub exists: to remove the friction of research and promote good governance and ethics at scale–data quality, consent, and user privacy for participant panel management–for whoever is doing research. Book a demo today.
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