Study Design and Results (group)

Last revised date: 9/17/2026

Overview

Design an accessible study and run it

Required Competencies

When you turn in this homework, also turn in these competencies

• Inclusive Experiments

Assignment Details

• Plan for testing your prototype
  • Prepare for your client engagement meeting
    • Decide on study structure
    • Decide how to make your experiment inclusive
    • Decide on study protocol
    • Informed consent
  • Create your Report
  • Handin
    • Team Contribution & AI use Statement
    • Competencies

Plan for testing your prototype

Consider your goals for testing. For example, how you will test (1) the accessibility and (2) the functionality of your prototype. What do you want to learn/measure in both categories (that is feasible with this testing method?)

• Identify any ethical issues: Are there any risks of safety, privacy, or other concerns regarding these activities?
• How will the access needs of each person be met? Include communication, materials, space, and time in your answer to this question.
• Identify and address concerns regarding power dynamics, safety, ableism, racism, or anything else that might affect inclusive participation.

Prepare for your client engagement meeting

• A basic approach is to have participants think aloud while they try to complete tasks using your interface
• You should work with your project mentor to identify ~2 people to test with

Decide on study structure

• List 2-3 Activities you wish to learn about.
  • What are they?
  • Will you ask your clients to demonstrate them or talk about them?
• Describe your research activities. They should be selected to help you know more about your target user(s), their goals and needs, and the environment they are in. These activities can include semi-structured interviews, participant observation, fly on the wall observation, questionnaire, and more.
• Define study roles: List who in your group will lead the interview, take notes, ensure that accessibility needs are met, and handle scheduling and client contact.
• Identify stakeholders: List all stakeholders will be involved (clients, clients, group members, etc).

Decide how to make your experiment inclusive

(Graded on Inclusive Experiments)

• Identify any ethical issues: Are there any risks of safety, privacy, or other concerns regarding these activities?
• How will the access needs of each person be met? Include communication, materials, space, and time in your answer to this question.
• Identify and address concerns regarding power dynamics, safety, ableism, racism, or anything else that might affect inclusive participation.

Decide on study protocol

• Consider the AEIOU as you develop your study protocol
  • Activities
    • Will you ask your clients to demonstrate them or talk about them?
    • How, if at all, are clients’ racial, language, gender, disability or other identities harmed, or supported, during these activities?
  • Environments
    • Where do the activities take place? How will you ask about this?
    • What structural forces, or assumptions, are at play regarding client race, gender and/or disability status?
  • Interactions
    • Who or what does the client interact with when accomplishing the activities? What is a typical sequence of interactions?
    • What biases or assumptions might impact the client during these interactions?
  • Objects
    • What objects do they use and how?
    • Are any of them accessibility tools?
    • How are cultural identity, gender identity, and disability identity represented in these objects, if at all?
  • Users
    • Who are the stakeholders that clients interact with when accomplishing the activity?
    • What sort of power differentials exist in these interactions?

Informed consent

(Graded on Accessible Communication)

You must create a consent form using the UW simple informed consent template as a starting place and make sure it is accessible to your participants, and meets our accessible document standards in case any participant has a disability you don’t know about.

Create your Report

• Summarize what you learned from each participant. What was surprising? What went as planned
• Describe how you made your experiment accessible (Graded on Inclusive Experiments)
  • Ethical and/or intersectional identity related issues relevant to your project Should be about one paragraph. Describe how you worked to ensure your experiment addressed client identities, including but not limited accessibility
  • Concerns regarding power dynamics, safety, ableism, racism, or anything else that might affect inclusive participation or engagement with your project Should be one paragraph or less. We expect you to pick one or two of these concerns that are relevant to your project and address them.

Handin

Turn in your report

Team Contribution & AI use Statement

Submit a contribution statement and AI use along with each group submission (for all graded team assignments!). Include this contribution statement as an additional part of your submission, along with the names of your group members. Please note that we will not grade submissions where this statement is missing.

Competencies

You will also turn in the individual requirements for this competency

Inclusive Experiments (rubric)

• Experimental design documentation
• Informed consent forms
• Accessibility and inclusion considerations
• Analysis of power dynamics and ethical issues