This blogpost covers the content covered in Week 8: Research. To read about the start of RI2 click here and to read a reflection on this week click here.
This week on the course we explored the area of ethics within research which is thorny and should always be considered. The topic focused mainly on how ethical research itself is and explored the concept of ethics review boards and how these play a part in research projects.
Personally I am not very interested in pursuing a career in research but can definitely understand how this is an important topic to consider and should be part of any project. Alcywn Parker in his lecture this week on ‘Integrity, Ethics and Policy’ mentions that an ethical analysis of any project should be undertaken at the start of every research project (Parker 2023). This made me think how in the past in my own illustration practice and BA we spoke about the ethical considerations of our work and how these had to be considered when creating - we had to be aware of what narratives we were creating and perpetrating and what our voice engaging in these narratives also meant. At that point in my creative practice research was something that we did especially at the start of a project, in tandem with ideation so that we embarked on projects that had legs to stand on as we dug ever deeper into them.
With maturity I now see that research is something that can live alongside a project as it can help you work through problems, though for me personally it still naturally finds it home at the start of projects due to the ideation process being the act of asking questions and trying to answer them.
Bringing ethical evaluations into our work and research is important and something which I feel strongly about seeing as we live in a society that is ever more aware of the impacts of its choices. Research and evaluation checkpoints in general are extremely helpful, as Erik Geelhoed, a user and audience researcher said: the systematic evaluation of what you created is the only way to stay on top of what you’re creating (Geelhoed 2023). He was talking about doing user testing and user research so that you truly understand your audience as well as can verify that your artefacts are truly hitting their mark, but I feel that his advice can be expanded out to simply being good practice in any project. I already regularly engage with self-reflection evaluation throughout a project and adding in an ethical question is an easy way to ensure that I am also keeping in mind how my artefacts affect the ecosystems I want them to inhabit.
User research and testing is an area I am looking forward to developing throughout the course, I have spied “Think Like a UX Researcher: How to Observe Users, Influence Design, and Shape Business Strategy” by David Travis and Philip Hodgson on my personal MA reading list I have been compiling and will probably follow with that after I have finished reading “Agile Foundations”. I believe that by better researching and understanding my audiences I can also tackle a linked issue which is accessibility and equity within design. UX design, by centering the person, has an unparalleled power of truly supporting and empowering its target audience if the products are correctly researched and created with the right intentions. But to be able to do this I need to do as Geelhoed says “Get to know the people you design for” (Geelhoed 2023), which can only be done through considered user research. This is not an area that I know much about just yet, it’s more an aspect of UX design which I am really looking forward to exploring and developing throughout my masters and career.
The challenge activity this week had us take the position of an ethical review board to consider the level of risk of some applications and what could be done so that the risks are mitigated.
The risk factor checklist is shown in the table below. From what I have learnt in the week, ethical considerations and reviews work on a better safe than sorry basis, so as soon as research ticks one of the boxes of a higher level of risk I have considered that entire research to be of that level, even if it’s only by one factor. That specific factor therefore must have mitigating processes in place befitting of its risk level.
| Low Risk | Medium Risk | High Risk |
|---|---|---|
| no greater risk than that encountered in every day life | potential for harm / distress but likelihood is low and the risks can be mitigated with simple, standardised procedures | risk of harm / distress and no way to mitigate it or mitigation is complex and bespoke and requires feedback to the ethics board to ensure that it is still suitable |
| doesn’t involve any participants (purely desk based research) | involves people | working with data regarded as unlawful (ie. terrorist acts) |
| doesn’t involve contentious or sensitive themes | has access to personal data | involves sensitive topics such as: sexual, political or illegal behaviour, experience of violence, abuse or exploitation, sexist behaviour, mental health and/or treatment, physical health and/or treatment |
| involves routine practices that do not require a risk assessment | involves observing animals | could induce psychological stress, anxiety or humiliation |
| interact with communities that have different views of what is or isn’t ethical —> space for misunderstandings that could cause harm | could induce more than minimal pain | |
| involves intrusive interventions that are not part of the participant’s daily life (such as intense exercise when they are not in the habit of exercising so frequently) | ||
| causing participants to reveal information which could be a problem for them later on | ||
| research involving human tissue |
Table. 1: Sarah Gomes Munro: 2023. Levels of ethical risk in research per Falmouth University.