User research with disabled participants has many benefits for research, design, and business. In short, understanding people’s diverse needs leads to more inclusive products and services, and more robust business. However, it can be difficult to know what’s needed to take the first steps in making research practices more inclusive. This tutorial helps explain some of the techniques you can use to conduct research with disabled participants and how you can learn from them to develop inclusive insights that can be applied in a wide variety of design contexts.
Instructors
Erica McCoy has a background spanning the breadth of the user experience journey, with a passion for accessibility. She advocates that including people with disabilities in user research is vital to making digital products more inclusive and diverse. In her current role as an Inclusive User Experience Researcher at CVS Health, Erica promotes accessibility and inclusion awareness by sharing the different experiences people with disabilities face when interacting with digital products; ensuring they are given a voice to influence design outcomes. Outside of work you might find her in the gym, exploring the great outdoors, experiencing different cultures through world travel, or dreaming up her next big adventure.
Greg Weinstein is a design researcher and accessibility designer with a passion for inclusive experiences, accessibility, and sound. He advocates for the transformative power of inclusive research, and he puts that advocacy to work at CVS Health, where he leads a program in user research with disabled participants. Greg has also been the accessibility co-coordinator for EPIC since 2020. In a previous life, Greg was an ethnomusicologist who studied recording studios and the ways that producers, engineers, and musicians learn to communicate with each other about music and sound.
