Programming Feature: Making Research and Insight Ethical and Inclusive
Who: WIN London X WIN NYC
What: Making Research and Insight Ethical and Inclusive
When: January 26th & 28th, 2021
To kick-off WIN’s Q1 theme of Ethics and Inclusion, the London and NYC WIN chapters collaborated on our first ever, two-part, global Mind Salon.
Professionally, many of us navigate the world of data capture and analysis basis whether in an agency or client-side organization. However, a key challenge is ensuring that we take an ethical and inclusive approach to the research process - across recruitment, capture, analysis, and implementation - so that we can deliver on innovation that truly represents the end consumer. Central to these digital events, were the questions: how do we ethically navigate data? What should we keep in mind to ensure we don’t miss out on certain perspectives and tell diverse stories?
Mind Salons are intimate meet-ups where the WIN community comes together to explore a specific topic based on a pre-read. For the topic of making research and insights ethical and inclusive, our particular aim was to:
Learn from other participant’s experiences and gain tips on how to approach research and insights with an ethical and inclusive lens.
Build confidence in our abilities to identify areas where we can improve our research and insights processes to be more ethical and inclusive.
The Mind Salon covered two pertinent elements of great and ethical innovation:
Recruitment and Research
Before attending the recruitment and research mind salons, the attendees explored reading and video material: The Ethical User Research Checklist by Alba Villamil, The checklist and The Mistake Companies Make When They Use Data to Plan Diversity Efforts.
In the session, we discussed how we can ensure appropriate representation across participants and considered what we need to take into account to guarantee we thoughtfully address sensitive issues. We also reflected on how we ethically design for our own biases and manage the pressure to censure unfamiliar or uncomfortable data.
2. Synthesize and Implementation of insights
During the second session, we discussed our learnings and reflections from the pre-read: Is That Chart Saying What You Think It’s Saying? We reflected on the pitfalls of navigating short-term projects while aiming to make a long-lasting impact with a focus on keeping clients accountable. We also shared experiences on how to take a critical approach when delivering various material outputs and discussed methods to ensure that the end consumer is authentically and thoroughly represented in end deliverables and recommendations.
At the end of both sessions, we reflected on our key ‘take-aways’ and any actions or considerations we would like to put in place moving forward.
A huge thank you to the WIN team, Georgie, Neha, Justine, Becki, and Lucia. As well as our community members for your joining the conversation and for contributing so actively and critically in these discussions.
Want to continue the conversation? Check-in and share your thoughts with the wider community on the WIN Hub. Curious to see insights from the workshop? Keep an eye out for the WINSight, coming soon to our member newsletter. Subscribe here.
Editorial by Joëlla Bril
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