User Research with People with Disabilities

Blackboard with cartoon bullhorn shouting “We Want Your Feedback” with numerous icons representing users including money, ideas, reviews, information, opinions, time, pieces of the puzzle and global indicators

I was really excited this week to be presenting at the #PacRim2019 conference on UX research involving people with disabilities, one of my favorite things to talk about. I will be giving the same talk with with my co-presenter David Fazio at #CSUN2019 next week, and on my own at Shape, an internal VMware design conference in April.

If you know a fair amount about user research, but haven’t done research involving participants with disabilities, there are a few significant differences that the moderator or interviewer needs to be aware of.

Give Your Personas Disabilities

The purpose of personas is to create realistic representations of your most important user segments for reference. You may have Jason, who is a mid-level IT staff member who does SaaS administration, or Sandy in accounting who does PCI compliance and is working on her MBA. Your personas may also contain real-life details such as how many years of experience they have, what languages they speak, and personality traits that impact their software use (impatience, for example). Your personas should:

• Match the major user groups for your software/websites
• Identify significant needs and expectations of these major user groups
• Describe real people with backgrounds…