Inclusive cohorts for research

“A design is only successful when the recipient of a design confirms it has achieved its purpose.” Kat Holmes, Mismatch

Engaging with customers and understanding their need provides the biggest long-term gain for teams creating or procuring new products and services. Working with customers along the journey:

• affords insights into customer needs and current barriers they face
• informs our design thinking to include features that are essential for some and useful for all.
• delivers great products and experiences for all customers, not just some.

When we engage with customers we want to be inclusive. There is no such thing as the 'average' customer. Customer diversity is the norm not the exception. Every customer possesses a unique set of abilities. These abilities includes auditory, cognitive, learning, neurological, physical, speech and visual capacities and limitations. The richness of the diversity offers a wealth of insights. The question many struggle with is how do we gather diverse insights in a considered and sustainable way?

Be clear about what customers share in common 

Irrespective of differences in background and ability, all customers share common functional needs and requirements. Researching and testing with a customer cohort that is representative of the shared functional needs and requirements is the inclusive and strategic approach we should all use. Customers share a need for:

1. Perceivability: Customers can use either their sight, hearing, or touch to perceive all content and controls.
2. Simplicity: All content and controls are easy to understand and use by any customer. The design provides familiar, consistent interactions that make complex tasks simple and straightforward to perform.
3. Personalisation: Customers can choose how they best need to interact with our product. This requires the product to work seamlessly with things such as, dynamic text, dark mode, screen orientation, screen readers, text to speech.
4. Privacy: Customer expect that privacy and security are integral are integral part of product or service. Any accessibility features of the product or service should maintain privacy of any user oat the same level as other users.

Isn't customer background and ability important?

Yes, of course! We begin with what customers share in common, (functional needs) and then we build upon it.

All customers will experience changes in their circumstances and abilities throughout their life. In fact, if we live long enough, we will all experience age related disabilities. The nature of each customer’s abilities determines how they need to engage and interact with our products and services and, how their functional needs must be met. If there is a mismatch between the features of a customer’s body and abilities and features of our products and services then points of exclusion occur. Poor design thinking and execution is the precursor of that exclusion in many cases.

Customers with a permanent disability require products and services to be delivered to recognised standards of accessibility so they may be afforded the dignity of equal access. Those same features are immensely useful to and benefit customers with temporary disabilities (injury/illness) and situation limitations. In otherwords, the features that are essential for some, are useful for all. This means that when we-respond to the needs of customers with no or low abilities first, we create a more accesible and usable experience that benefits all customers. This is crucial to defining and identifying our MVC.

Image adapted from Microsoft’s Inclusive Design Toolkit

Defining a Minimum Viable Cohort (MVC)

Based upon customer functional needs, differences in demographics, abilities and exclusion points a customer cohort of 4 - 8 participants is the Minimum Viable Cohort (MVC) for qualitative research. An inclusive cohort includes:

1. Customers who are blind/significant low vision: Cohort members should include customers who use a screen reader such as VoiceOver, Narrator, NVDA, JAWS, or Talkback.
2. Customers who have limited vision: Cohort members should include customers who either use inbuilt screen magnification software or third party apps such ZoomText. Potential cohort members includes customers with age-related macular degeneration, age-related farsightedness, cataracts, diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma and myopia. Additional consideration should be given to customers with other vision conditions such as retinitis pigmentosa (tunnel vision) or colour blindness. Can include customers over 65.
3. Customers who have no or limited hearing: Potential cohort members includes customers with auditory disabilities range from mild or moderate hearing loss in one or both ears (“hard of hearing”) to substantial and uncorrectable hearing loss in both ears (“deafness”). Some customers with auditory disabilities can hear sounds but sometimes not sufficiently to understand all speech, especially when there is background noise. Some Deaf customers will require access to signing interpreters.
4. Customers who have difficulty reading, concentrating or understanding: Potential cohort members includes customers with dyslexia, dyscalculia, ADHD, acquired brain injury, learning disability or whose main language is not english.
5. Customers who have limited fine motor dexterity: Potential cohort members includes customers with muscular dystrophy, RSI, rheumatism, tremors or spasms, quadriplegia. Can include customers over 65.