97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know

Chapter 64. Diverse Participant Recruiting Is Critical to Authentic User Research

Megan Campos

When I began my career in UX research, I noticed that all of our participant recruitment screeners called for “a mix” of criteria like race, gender, household income, and education level. I also noticed that asking for “a mix” led to demographically homogeneous participants. The team always came up with reasons why we could not or would not push for a more diverse recruit: usually the reason was that it did not seem like demographics had a direct impact on the experiences and behaviors we were studying.

But individual mixes of demographic criteria do have an impact on how we experience the world and on how the world experiences us. Everything from the kind of healthcare you can expect to receive to the acknowledgment of your basic rights as a human being can be shaped by your demographic makeup. To argue that demographics do not shape behavior is to ignore all evidence to the contrary; to acknowledge that demographics do shape behavior is to render moot the argument that they do not matter in user research.

Once I acknowledged that asking for “a mix” wasn’t cutting it and was likely resulting in a less-than-full picture of our user groups, a different approach became necessary. It was time to get specific:

• Flesh out the demographics: We examined the client’s existing population to gather ...