Obtaining Consent for User Research
Better designs should never come at the cost of another person’s wellbeing. Informed consent is a fundamental part of an ethical research program, which respects participants and protects them from harm.
To ensure that user research provides meaningful data, UX teams must get feedback from representative customers. You can certainly reach out to a customer for a quick phone call about their experiences without calling it a research session or needing a consent form. However, as soon as you transcribe quotes from that call or share that person’s information with other people on your team, you are technically (mis)using that person’s data in a manner to which they did not agree.
In other words, by not informing your participants about how you will use their data and by misleading them into believing that they were having a private conversation, you may be violating research ethics principles and taking advantage of that person’s kindness and willingness to help.
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