Check the assumptions you have about target audiences - especially with Black consumers. Don't assume the data you have is enough, look into the nuances to guide your business decisions.

Dawn's team at Mahogany Minds helps brand teams not only ask questions, but to learn more but know the optimal questions to ask to get beyond initial perceptions. 

On this episode Dawn talks about brands that have successfully - and sometimes less successfully! - connect with Black consumers.

Everyone's living a different experience and it's important to make Black customers feel seen. That indicates a long term commitment by the brand and helps create an authentic relationship with the brand. 

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Connect with Dawn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawnvcarr/

Join Mahogany www.mahogany-minds.com 

Work with Mahogany: www.mahoganyinsights.com 

"When we improve products for accessibility we improve the experience for everyone." 

Annabel Weiner, UX Manager, Accessibility at Ally inspires organisations to proactively ensure people with disabilities are included in usability work across the board, especially shifting it to the earlier side of research efforts. Including these voices early – especially in the prototyping and discovery stages – saves a lot of time in the development and testing phases later on.

Annabel also sympathizes with those struggling for those getting funding and suggests talking about how including those with accessibility really does improve market share and WOM recommendations.

Her challenge for TRIP listeners? Try to build accessibility into one of your routine research practices. And know it's OK to make mistakes and modifications! Just get comfortable asking about making modifications to ensure they can participate in the research.

Check out Annabel's recommended resources: https://inclusivedesign24.org/2025/ and https://www.deque.com/axe-con/

This is a Live Recording with guest Stacy Penna of Lumivero recorded at TQR (The Qualitative Report). Stacy is Lumivero's Growth Marketing Director and host of Between the Data, a NVivo Podcast Series. She shares her thoughts on the importance of inclusive insights with TRIP on the TQR stage, with time built for audience Q&A. 

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As the Growth Marketing Director of Lumivero’s research software: Citavi, NVivo, @RISK and XLSTAT, Stacy is committed to managing the research growth marketing team to develop global campaigns from strategy to final marketing execution. Her team develops and implements successful marketing initiatives, such as thought leadership events, the Lumivero Community, Lumivero Conference, across digital and traditional channels to promote their software globally. 

Think about it in 3 steps, based on your level of control and influence:

1 - Start by reflecting on yourself: take a personal Inventory of yourself and your practices, and personal education. 

2 - Then reflect on your work/your team: take a second inventory, this time of your work- what biases are built in there, what do you have the power to control.

3 - Finally reflect on your environment/industry/larger picture. Think about the larger systemic changes of the way you work and the way your company does business.

Tune in to hear more about Discover’s Equity Sequence Model and their recent ESG Report: https://www.discover.com/company/esg/2022-esg-report/home/?cmpgnid=leap____&utm_campaign=&utm_medium=LEAP&utm_source=LinkedIn.

And try Jessica's tip to 'language challenge' yourself using The Micropedia of Microaggressions https://www.themicropedia.org/

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As Director of Consumer Insights, Jessica uses consumer insights to drive growth in Discover's lending and deposits products. She leads a team of insights professionals, with expertise across the product suite, combining macro consumer trends, competitive intelligence, syndicated data, and custom qualitative and quantitative research to drive decision making. She has a passion for understanding the "whys" behind consumer behavior and choices through consumer research. 

In episode 5 of season 4, we meet Ricardo and Hung, the founders of BIEN, a motion design company driven by diversity and inclusion and a pioneer in their industry. Their personal experiences and cultural backgrounds led them to create BIEN in 2017 with the mission of making inclusion the foundation of their business. The motion design industry has historically has lacked representation of diverse voices, but Ricardo and Hung have actively strategized to make their company inclusive in every aspect. From their practices to resourcing, they've fostered an environment that promotes diversity. BIEN is sparking a new generational shift in the motion design industry, inspiring change and broader representation for designers and artists. Join us as we explore their inspiring journey and learn how embracing diversity can bring positive transformation to the creative world.

In our conversation with Anouar, we discussed that behavior-based methodologies bring authenticity to work versus analyzing claims on wants and needs. Anouar shares his academic background and brings a new perspective to inclusivity, sharing how authentic behavior is not tied to personal identity. And we can forecast the future by looking at habits and wagering on different scenarios. As we continue the strides of data quality and inclusion in our work, Anouar brings a fresh challenge by staying proactive, understanding bias' in the methodology to different audiences, and putting in place an auditing method to verify the data responses.

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Anouar El Haji is the Founder and CEO of Veylinx. He is known for introducing with Veylinx a Nobel Prize-winning methodology to the world of market research. Veylinx supports leading brands with a better understanding of wants and needs to make strategic product decisions with confidence.

Anouar is the recipient of several awards among which the Young Talent Award from the Dutch Market Research Association. Anouar holds a PhD degree in Marketing and two master's degrees all from the University of Amsterdam. His articles have been published in scientific journals and various media. He is a visiting scholar at the Amsterdam Business School.

Veylinx currently has offices in Amsterdam, New York and Casablanca.

Today's episode discusses the evergreen benefits of working with diverse-owned suppliers including driving increased brand consistency, benefiting the communities the supplier operates within and represents, and improving work quality through different perspectives and approaches to problem solving, and how those benefits increase when using a supplier who authentically represents a specific target audience.

Guest, Wynter Blanquet-Warren, cautions that so much of the hurdle to effective DEI efforts and supplier diversity programs is the "lack of humanity." The solution: proactively put more partners and suppliers in front of marketing teams to remove barriers and help them meet their diversity goals, learn how to "be the face" and champion of supplier diversity within your organization, dig into your history, find your own triggers and motivations to be vulnerable, and have conversations about what you want to achieve so you can create community around the discussion.

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Wynter Blanquet-Warren, is the current Director of Creative & Business Operations at Walmart, is a marketing leader with deep experience in creative operations, account management, and outsourcing strategies. During her time in advertising, she led cross-functional teams in support of partners across financial services, CPG, and lifestyle brands. Transitioning into the tech industry, Wynter joined Sage Software to stand up project management and creative operations as part of a new global brand team. As Head of Agency Operations & Purchasing at Meta, Wynter led strategy, implementation and operations for a global preferred supplier program aimed at improving quality of work, performance, and cost savings for outsourced global business marketing programs and content. As a DEI champion, she also launched an internal supplier diversity initiative at Meta to galvanize incremental spend and support for diverse businesses.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wblanquet-warren/

In this episode, we discuss the importance of including a ‘cultural broker’ on your team; someone fluent in the culture - not just the language - who can weigh in on planning and materials to ensure they will resonate with your target audience(s).  We also talk through how to prioritize translations and transcriptions, when AI can help, and when a human is needed to include cultural subtleties and nuances along the way. Jill recommends proactively lining up a partner you can trust and reminds us to seek out diverse voices in all projects, not just those that specifically request or require their inclusion.

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Jill Kushner Bishop, PhD

Founder & CEO, Multilingual Connections

No matter where in the world Jill is or what she’s doing – she’s always focusing on creating connections across languages and cultures. After studying and teaching internationally, Jill brought her PhD in Linguistic Anthropology to the corporate world, where she worked as a user researcher for Sapient and then oversaw Language, Culture & Diversity Programs for 100+ Chipotle Mexican Grill locations. 

In 2005, she launched Multilingual Connections to help organizations understand, engage, and grow their multilingual audiences. Their customized services include translation, transcription, multimedia localization, and bilingual research support services. When she’s not working, Jill  is spending time with her husband and teen son, renovating houses, and trying to make her garden grow.

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillkbishop/⁠ 

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/multilingual-connections⁠ 

⁠https://www.facebook.com/multilingualconnections⁠ 

⁠https://www.instagram.com/multilingual_connections⁠ 

⁠https://twitter.com/m_connections⁠  

In the episode, we discuss the pursuit of constant curiosity of humans and how language, articulation, and staying mindful of how to remain inclusive.

From recognizing unconscious bias from the screening to pulling back the layers of training our ears to new environments, we uncover how to bring our authentic voice to the conversation. She challenges TRIP listeners to reflect on "am I making an effort to continue exposure and train my ear to listen from a new environment, accent, or group of individuals"? Aïcha gives some valuable takeaways: hold space for the who, be more intentional on screener questions for articulation and be fearless in challenging some of the demographic groups targeted in your insights work.

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Aïcha Ly is a trilingual, solutions-driven market and competitive intelligence strategist, speaker, and activist. She is the Founder and CEO of SITB LLC, a values-driven boutique firm specializing in public speaking coaching and message crafting and Head of Consumer Insights at OpenSignal. A native of Senegal, West Africa, Aïcha draws from her experience being a triple minority – female, a foreigner, and Black – in leadership roles at several Fortune 1000 companies, to champion and advocate for others. Aïcha brings a wealth of knowledge and life experience, sharing the power of linguistics and the importance of inclusive insights, including her research and TEDx presentation on unconscious bias related to regional, racial, and international accents.

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/aichaly/
• SITB LLC - https://www.sitbstudio.com/
• TEDx Talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxgQ0WqV0Zc&t=2s
• VoxPopMe - https://site.voxpopme.com/
• OpenSignal - https://www.opensignal.com/

Today's conversation with Kisha stresses that getting innovative and inclusive is not only necessary, it's an opportunity. She encourages TRIP listeners to "be more bold and brave and do things differently...dig deeper, challenge and push" because our systems have been built on bias. She challenges insights professionals to peel the layers back and dig deeper on everything, even when it seems tiring, and also offers our listeners C Space's Inclusive Screener report and Mindset Map quiz to use it as a framework in our work.

• C-Space's Inclusive Screener Report
• C-Space's DEI Mindset Map

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Kisha Payton is currently Global Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer at C Space, where she brings over 15 years of experience building cross-functional teams that make change happen. A graduate of Spelman College and Duke University School of Law, Kisha combines her nonprofit, legal and for-profit backgrounds to help companies change the way they view Diversity and Inclusion. She currently resides in Atlanta, GA with her son Lawson where she spends her spare time as an amateur iPad artist.

Before products are developed, we have to take action by using research inclusion to reduce barriers to access and ensure people see themselves within the product. There is an opportunity to use inclusion as a delighting force within products. "When I research, I look at the relationship we have with the customer or user of our product. A way to invite people into a product is by establishing trust and transparency, which is an aspect of care. Inclusion is care."

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Ashlee is a research leader dedicated to improving user experience through data and insights-driven product strategy, leading research teams in the growth, consumption/creation, and i18n space.

Don't Just Talk About It, Be About It! - How to move beyond our norms to shape a more inclusive market research industry.  The podcast will focus on fostering positive work environments for diverse talent and results and reactions teams should expect from doing so.

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Sequoyah, a data-driven marketer and media disrupter in Atlanta, GA affectionately known as DataBae, has been in the marketing industry for 10+ years. After gaining valuable experience from organizations big and small, Sequoyah chartered her own path, becoming a solopreneur and founding a boutique marketing agency, 924 CoOperative in 2021 and a greeting card line, HappyResignationDay.com, in 2022.

"You don't have to do 0 to 100 things in your first study you try, but little things can make a difference."

In this episode of  TRIP, Rajasi Desai shares her journey and practical strategies for fostering inclusivity in user research.

She emphasizes the impact of small, intentional steps—such as using multilingual and offline surveys, adapting scheduling for global participants, and making space for human connection. Rajasi also highlights internal initiatives like inclusive UX book clubs and team-wide efforts to diversify participant recruitment.

Tune in to learn about inclusion with recommendations:

1. Start Small and Iterative – Focus on making one aspect of your research process more inclusive each time, rather than trying to overhaul everything at once.
2. Use Multilingual and Offline Recruitment Methods – Incorporate surveys in multiple languages and distribute them both online and offline to reach underrepresented groups.
3. Foster Cultural Sensitivity in Execution – Learn to pronounce participants' names, adjust scheduling for global time zones, and create space for vulnerable conversations to build genuine rapport.

Links to Resources:

• 6 design failures that could have been avoided with inclusive research 
• Global UX - Designing for gender equity  
• Making the web a more inclusive place for minority languages (video) from Inclusive Design 2022. Their yearly conference is available on YouTube.

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Rajasi is a Principal UX Researcher at MathWorks, where she leads the Inclusive UX Group. Her work centers on creating processes that enable researchers and designers to be inclusive in their work. She has presented her work at prominent conferences such as UXPA Boston, UXPA International, ICML, NeurIPS, and ConveyUX. Rajasi holds a graduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

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TRIP is a self-funded project, produced in partnership with Hasty Storytelling, and is dedicated to raising awareness of new research practices for inclusion, challenging the status quo, and identifying assumptions in the industry by talking to people who are pushing in the insights industry.

To support our production with a donation and receive a shoutout for you and your business visit: https://buymeacoffee.com/trippodcast

To learn more about The Research Inclusion Project visit: https://theresearchinclusionproject.com

As Manager of Consumer Insights, Jana works at Savage X Fenty, a revolutionary brand in the lingerie space. At Savage X, Jana has helped build the market research department from the ground up and for the past 3 years has focused on delivering impactful insights to stakeholders globally. She is passionate about not only doing the right work, but also shaping the work to meet the company’s core values, one of which is heavily focused on inclusivity. Jana has worked in the market research industry for 8+ years and prior to Savage X, worked in client services at LRW.

Trigger Warning: During discussion of Michelle McNamara’s book I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, the speaker briefly mentions rape

“If you don't have a strategy in place, it's hard to take action.” - Renee

Renee, Founder of Culturally Intelligent Training & Consulting (CITC) talks to TRIP about how organizations can benefit from a framework to level-set teams so they are more aware of shifting dynamics that can be culturally bound to ultimately meet the needs and communicate with people who are different from us.

Get inspired to start building your openness, awareness and responsiveness (and what we can all learn from middle school lunch tables!)

Rebecca Mir
Director of Digital Product Management, Ad Council

Rebecca shares how empathy has helped her research strategy by navigating the nuance of diverse beliefs and, above all, meeting people where they are. In her research, she has to discover where people are in media outlets and where they are from an emotional journey perspective. She balances the challenges of soliciting new information to build new campaigns, reach different audiences, and language that authentically connects with them to make an impact.

“We use research to cultivate empathy to our audiences. People contain multitudes; research insights and deliverables remind us of it.”

Rebecca lays out a foundation of how research can ‘Cultivate Empathy’:

• Empathizing with the audience despite not sharing their beliefs and values
• Empathy in storytelling– health, education, and safety campaigns.
• Providing clear and understandable information by reaching people with intentionality in the language and resources in communication
• Embracing a testing and learning approach, cultivating awareness, and genuinely recognizing who’s in the room/ not in the room
• Test, learn, act, and remember to CELEBRATE!

The Ad Council uses the power of communications to tackle’s the nation’s most challenging issues. They are the only national nonprofit organization with media, advertising, and marketing professionals combined with empowering action and improving lives.

https://belongingbeginswithus.org/
https://lovehasnolabels.com/

Archie, host of the I Am Not From Here podcast joined us on T.R.I.P to give voice to the migrant experience as a global citizen, UX researcher, and community wrangler. Tune in to hear how her cultural experiences challenge the research community to broaden their migrant point of view.

“Everyone says POC is people of color, I disagree. I think POC is a Pocket of Culture. As a society, we are not valuing people from different cultures and utilizing their knowledge. We are taking the time to understand the cultural variations, inherent bias, and the context in the decision-making process.” – Archie

Hi, TRIP listeners! We're back with our first episode of 2021! We are currently working on producing more episodes for the rest of the season. In the meantime, enjoy our first episode of the year and we’ll be back soon!
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Catherine “Mickey” Hill
Founder of Advanced Insights
Qualitative Research Expert

Mickey is a highly accomplished, passionate market research professional with a proven track record of delivering consumer insights and strategies that help build brands and grow businesses--from funded tech start-ups to Fortune 100 and 500 companies.

Mary Ann Mendez
Research Accessibility Consultant & Director-at-Large on the Northwest Insights Association Board

Mary Ann is a research accessibility consultant with 20 years of market research data collection, field operations, and project management experience. She guides clients by testing qualitative and quantitative data collection surveys and research platforms to ensure these are accessible to people with disabilities. With over 20 years of experience working in research as a blind professional, Mary Ann offers a unique combination of field operations and data collection expertise along with accessibility testing as it relates to quantitative and qualitative research platforms and venues.

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Mary Ann walks us through her journey from project management to becoming a go-to resource for researchers wanting to better accommodate participants with disabilities. Today she works directly with platforms directly to set the standards and guide both the accessibility and usability of research tools.

“Accessibility is changing but usability is struggling. Understand that you have an opportunity to design your research from the beginning to include people with disabilities“ – Mary Ann

She’s an advocate of ensuring disabled participants are not excluded from research and emphasizes that small, simple shifts and inexpensive adjustments are sometimes all that is needed to accommodate participants of all abilities. She shares examples of simple accommodations that manage to make all the difference!

Some tips from this episode:

• Let participants speak with themselves
• Expect that they can participate
• Expect that participation may require an alternative technique
• Expect you won’t know what that technique will be, so ask your participants what you can do to accommodate their needs

Episode mentions:

• Inclusive Research: Making Research Accessible to People with Disabilities - QRCA
• Inclusive Research: Making Research Accessible to People with Disabilities: QRCA DE&I Task Force Monthly Series
• How to Write Great Alt Text — And Why It Matters
• Accessibility Fundamentals Overview 
• What is a screen reader?

How can research and insights have the most impact?  By being designed for inclusivity (and flexibility to allow for inclusive learnings) from the beginning.  Joey inspires teams to better understand their own. assumptions and engage in cross functional team members in the insights process, include and stakeholder interviews wherever possible and “bring those who weren’t on the research with you.”  He reminds us that while inclusivity is an important focus, it “doesn’t mean a lot until we are immersed in it!”

GUEST
Joey Kellner is a Director of Strategy & Insights and owner of Impact Strategy Group leading cross functional brands on research, uncover insights, and creating strategies to deliver business impact.

I see as getting back to basics and not being afraid to do the legwork to find people.  Particularly how it relates to finding and engaging harder to reach targets or underrepresented groups (i.e. people who are non-binary on the gender spectrum, people with disabilities, etc.).  I feel like a lot of companies, ours included, have mastered the art of social media advertising - and that's great.  It brings in new people to MR - but often they are general market.  When things get tricky (and fun) is when you have to not only go find people or organizations to assist but have to sell them on why it's important.

GUEST

Kerry Hecht is a life long market researcher and the CEO and Founder of Echo Market Research.  Echo is a unique and cutting edge agency designed to provide flexible solutions for brands, agencies and tech companies.  Echo’s unique strategy and tactics provide a strong foundation to build on throughout the research process – and beyond.

SHOW NOTES

Hear how to ‘recruit in a real way’ from ‘market researcher lifer’ Kerry Hecht

Kerry fills a gap in the industry with a panel or community management solution. She calls on us all to do a better job of vetting, finding participants and go the extra step to create a feedback loop so the participants are learning to keep engagement higher!

“We have to evolve so be the solution and make sure the feedback is the right feedback, even though it can be a scary proposition to change gears.” - Kerry

TIPS FROM THIS EPISODE

• Do a couple ‘quick and dirty’ IDIs with those who might be out of the standard spectrum to use that a to sell the importance of including those people in the conversation
• Roll your inclusivity philosophy into your website/core values so clients expect it and don’t need the conversation doesn’t need to start from scratch
• Have a compelling (and trustworthy) reason for organizations that are willing to put your opportunity in front of their members. Be prepared to be transparent and forthcoming with information about the project to include people new to research in the conversation.
• Speak their language: check your ego at the door to give people the space to talk about their experience in a way that’s meaningful to them.

MENTIONS

• GRBN’s Participant Engagement Initiative, https://grbn.org/
• Recollective, https://recollective.com/
• Qualtrics, https://www.qualtrics.com/
• Jenny Karubian, Ready to Launch Research

GUEST

Kayla Bright
- Facebook, Research Program Manager

Kayla is focused on Participant Management policies and compliance. She joined Facebook in 2015 as a Research Participant Recruiter and spent several years managing recruiting Facebook advertisers for research projects. Kayla is an advocate for inclusivity in the participant recruitment process within the research operations team. She attended the University of Texas at Austin where she earned her B.A. in Psychology. 

SHOW NOTES

Kayla emphasizes the importance of being open to exploring different paths and speaking to people potentially outside of your initial scope. She calls to recruiters to voice their opinions to partners and stokeholds during recruiting process and to connections with others outside of your company who also work to recruit participants to share and learn ideas from. 

In her role on the recruiting and compliance team at Facebook she has overseen a lot of recruiting since 2015! She and her team work to prioritize inclusivity throughout the entire recruiting and research process. They have access to an enviable database of 2.4B people, which she says is “a good problem to have.” But she cautions that teams with these resources be careful not to rush through the process just because “you have the numbers.” But instead reminds us that to focus and prioritize inclusivity, you may have to slow down a little bit! Slow down to ensure researchers are keeping inclusivity a priority when scheduling and thinking more broadly to include more voices. 

“We are exploring the opportunity to contact people through different tools/communication strategies (e.g. SMS recruiting) when traditional recruiting methods are not the way they typically use to communicate. It’s important to figure out to include as many diverse perspectives as we can without logistic blockers in the way, while still being compliant.”

For B2B projects that can mean including diverse types of businesses and business owners, or driving a bit further than you’d intended to hear a great story.

TIPS FROM THE EPISODE 

• Keep people’s schedules in mind; when are participants available due to job schedule, time zones, etc. 
• It’s worth it go to rural! Teams get excited to see a day to day life that is different from theirs’s at the home office 
• Provide stakeholders the information about why you’re making the decisions you’re making. And remind researchers that there are tools to make sure everyone is heard (e.g. interpreters)

My first experience into design and user research was a call for researchers that came through the Northwestern Anthropology Department to do work in the black community. I jumped at the opportunity because the project was on sickle cell research, and I lost my sister to sickle cell. There is a substantial gap in diverse thought leadership and representation in the research industry. Inclusion is about more than representation but about the making real and lasting change to the status quo as a result of that. I hope for our own field to become more inclusive.

GUEST

Nikki Yeboah
San José State University - Assistant Professor of Communication Studies
Nikki.yeboah@gmail.com
https://www.nikkiyeboah.com/research.html

SHOW NOTES

Hear how to ‘review your own identities before going into the field’ from ethnographer, oral historian, storyteller, and educator Nikki Yeboah.

Nikki reminds us that the insights field needs to look like everyone and while retrofitting inclusivity is not ideal, it’s what we’re all going to encounter in our work. She encourages us to restructure insights projects to give us the space to be inclusive in work and to value difference when the world is being organized around those insights - start from that perspective and build out.

“{Inclusion} It’s not passion that informs my work, it’s necessity. I am a part of a demographic that is often silenced. Doing this work is including myself My ritual is to journal before and after about who I and what makes my interview subject who they are on the table. Then go through what you’ve analyzed and how it impacted them” - Nikki

TIPS FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Reflect on your own identities – with any respondent, even more important for marginalized groups or sensitive topics you need to reflect before and after. It is the first step I take before going into the field. I begin by reflecting upon and journaling who I am (recognizing all my identities), understanding how that may affect the interview, and what perspectives that will bring to the context of the conversation. Also, we often forget that respondents see us and assess us during the interview. Our presence, appearance and identities impact what they reveal in the conversation. “It is not a 1-way mirror.” 
• Never short cut time to build rapport – It may take more than 1 interview, and longer than 1 hour. If you are going to a community that is not familiar or uncomfortable, then give time and space to really gain the insights needed to answer the objectives of the work. 
• Be wary of research routines – I encourage researchers to be open to stepping back, re-assessing, and approaching each project with new eyes. In international countries, we value our partnerships and have a conversation with difference and respect. It would be great if we gave the same space in our own country. We may need to do an ego check so that we understand the differences within our own USA culture and acknowledge how our research routine might not work with every and all communities. We are not a homogenous culture. It is both the most difficult part of our country and the most incredible. 
• Be open to approaching every new project outside of your comfort zone when you’re working with an unfamiliar community to you. We might need to re-approach our approach!

MENTIONS

Some of the questions I ask myself before entering the field can be found in the Methods section of Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance 3rd Ed. By D. Soyini Madison, under Lay Summary.

Join Kristin Spraggins and Katrina Noelle as they give you a sneak peak of what's to come for The Research Inclusion Project. Season 6 premieres on June 6th!

To learn more about The Research Inclusion Project visit: https://www.theresearchinclusionproject.com

TRIP is a self-funded project dedicated to raising awareness of new research practices for inclusion, challenging the status quo, and identifying assumptions in the industry by talking to people who are pushing in the insights industry.

To support our production with a donation and receive a shoutout for you and your business visit: https://buymeacoffee.com/trippodcast

In this episode, Katie Koehler and Jocelyn Monahan both share how inclusion drives their own work from an internal researcher perspective. They share the successes and challenges of implementing authenticity and representation in gaming. Katie shares some helpful tips as she has learned the importance of documentation in her own research to help other researchers. And Jocelyn shares how her own personal experience as a female in gaming has given her insight to product design changes to encourage inclusion for women in the social gaming environment. This episode was recorded at the Riot Games offices in Santa Monica, California, thanks for having us guys!

GUESTS

Katie Koehler
Riot Games - Creative Products Researcher
Find her on LinkedIn

Katie helps teams at Riot Games develop their strategies and make data-informed decisions during product development. She works with teams that are responsible for building out the world that Riot's in-game characters live in (like the Marvel universe) through cinematics, short stories, and television shows. She helps teams consider how they can make content that resonates with a diverse audience (women are gamers, too!) and how they can ensure Riot's in-game characters represent the diversity of League of Legends' expansive player base.

Jocelyn Monahan
Riot Games - Associate Analyst, Central Player Dynamics
Find her on LinkedIn

Jocelyn primarily is dedicated to systems that help drive the ways players interact with each other socially in our games. She is passionately dedicated to inclusivity both for people playing games and in the gaming industry and positive social design. Her career started in publication on social research and then evolved to understand player behavior within the gaming dynamics at Riot Games.

SHOW NOTES

Riot Games has been expanding their offerings and seek new ways of collecting data methods that reach beyond the current profile of their League of Legends player, and a need for more representation of diverse demographics. Katie & Jocelyn have been leading the research efforts to making the impact with reaching and learning from new audiences while taking more inclusive approaches. As Katie says: “Be inclusive in your design of your inclusive research”.

Katie & Jocelyn share how internal feedback has become a central point of learning and help set up for success before demographic, gender, and data collected for player representation (and the legal practices as well!). They have found identity spaces helped navigate inclusion within their own community of employees to help a more collaborative effort and open for others to share their own cultural perspective that create a representative environment.

They also shared the social experience is another part of player research where they need to understand data, and process of research planning for cohorts that are not often included because they are currently considered the “outlier”. For example, cannot design for women based on survivor bias. We can’t use data that only center  points on those that have “thick skin” who can ignore the negative comments and do not leave the game because they can tough it out.

“Creating internal documentation or ‘research on research’ if you will has become my new checkpoint of my discovery process for inclusivity in my practice”
– Katie Koehler 

“Collaboration has been most useful for me. Going across different products with the same purpose in mind gives more perspective and eyes on what will make the most impact.”
– Jocelyn Monahan

On this episode we speak with Merve Basdogan, Assistant Professor of Instructional Technology at Texas Tech University about how technology can bridge the gaps in learning and teaching practices.

The UDL framework she uses focuses on 3 key principles: engagement, representation, and expression.

Merve is working towards personalized instructions to bridge the digital divide for older adult learners to help them interact with the technological world.

Get inspired by the lessons learned in her technology mentorship program and think about how they may relate to interactions with research participants: engage in small talk to built rapport, give relevant/relatable reasons they should to learn a technology, and use jargon-free (and emoji-free) language, and give them practical opportunities. 

Read more about Universal Design for Learning (UDL) here: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/ed-magazine/14/01/all-along.

We were so grateful to connect with Merve at TQR in January 2024, stay tuned for next year's lineup here: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/

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Dr. Merve Basdogan is an Assistant Professor of Instructional Technology in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the College of Education, Texas Tech University. As a post-phenomenological scholar, Merve’s research focuses on a diverse array of topics, including the philosophy of technology, technology-enhanced teaching and learning environments, critical AI literacy, digital ethics, and cyberbullying. In 2023, Dr. Basdogan was awarded an AT&T Foundation Grant for her project, "Fostering Digital Literacy in Rural Communities: A University Student-led Technology Mentoring Program," which connects adults over 65 with teacher candidates in west Texas.

LinkedIn

As a founding member of the Accessibility Insights Consortium (AIC), Claire brought her expertise and shared with TRIP how accessibility participatory design can spark excitement from the top down and vice versa within an organization. Her first-hand perspective of celebrating incremental changes and pushing for better accessible processes gives listeners something to reflect on within the industry and in all of our work.

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Claire Ferrari holds a PhD in Rehabilitation Sciences & Human Computer Interaction, and a master’s in Interactive Telecommunications. As Principal UX Researcher at Verizon, Claire has built and continues to lead the company’s Accessible UX Research practice. Her work is dedicated to empowering others to include people with disabilities in product design – pushing practices beyond compliance, and improving experiences for all. 

Jennifer walks the TRIP co-hosts through project design choices her team has made to 'design with people, not for people' that have resulted in actionable insights and successful product and line launches.

Hear how REI uses their 'focused groups' methodology to make participants with similar contexts comfortable in research - and how they use these sessions to in turn making customers more comfortable in (and excited about getting out in) the great outdoors.  And they can see the results in their brand tracker to ensure the research is having the impact they intend.

Jennifer also shares an example of understanding the role of gender in sizing and fit. In that case they used 'friendship pairs' to create safe and relaxed environments that allow the team to get authentic insights to inform the design of the new Active Pursuits line.

Check out more info:

• About REI's co-created product collection with Outdoor Afro here
• REI Co-op Active Pursuits here
• Path Ahead Ventures here

And to learn more about 828's cultural empathy work, reach out here

Dana Keilman from Morning Light Strategy shines on the opportunity for inclusive insights on aging. Aging is a commonality that, at its core, is a human need not impacted or influenced by politics, news, or pop culture. Over the decades, society has focused on the youth for new product development and marketing, but now it’s time to question that focus. Older adults, as well as caregivers, provide white space opportunities often overlooked by brands and corporations. There are stigmas associated with growing old, many of which feed into myths that result in a misunderstanding of who they really are. What you need to know is that they provide a wealth of insight and are a cohort with real purchasing power for business impact.

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For the past 25 years, Dana has worked with Fortune 500 clients to develop and launch new products and services. For Dana, innovation is grounded in thoroughly understanding people’s needs and identifying opportunities for her clients to meet those needs better than competitive options. 

Recently, Dana launched Morning Light Strategy with Nicole Munsey to focus on the aging population and caregivers. Building on their past experience in consumer insights, they help clients innovate by more deeply understanding the needs, wants and opinions of older adults and their caregivers. 

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Links:

• Morning Light Strategy's Website
• Dana's LinkedIn
• Nicole's LinkedIn

Lisa and Lindsay joined forces recently on a research-on-research study with participants with a range of disabilities. They discovered many small, simple tweaks and changes that researchers can use to make research more accessible to those with disabilities.  In the episode they emphasize the value of including people with those needs in the research design, the importance of language and being sure to recognize assumptions you might be making as a research team along the way. 

For this participant group in particular, it's important to first make a conscious decision about if you will ask about the abilities and then, if it is relevant to do so, explain why you are asking for information about their abilities during the screening process.  It can be as simple as stating that you want to hear from a diverse set of participants.  Carry this simplicity and transparency into the research itself; ask simple, straightforward questions and specify why you're asking why you're asking the questions.  Then give people the space they need to answer the questions.  As Lisa says, "it doesn't have to be overwhelming and expensive. You can make simple changes to make your research more inclusive."  Tune in to get inspired on the small changes you can make - and how to explain the need to make those changes to your stakeholders

Recorded from the IIEX North America Conference in Austin, TRIP brings on Alka Baijal.

The Buzzback survey has identified 24% of the difference in ability, and many do not report this information. Alka leads the charge at Nissan in building foresight, which requires a deep understanding of the nuances of unique types of customers, including those who need accommodation or a disability to meet their needs. Having a positive experience with Nissan's products for those with different abilities is table stakes. From the screener to the qualitative research methodology, Alka and her team look to accommodate the person at the center of all our work.

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Alka Baijal is the Sr. Manager for Trends and New Methodologies in the Market Intelligence department at Nissan North America. She has over 20 years of experience in automotive and consumer insight research in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia. Alka partners with internal stakeholders and Nissan leadership to help define how best to serve future customers. Her current responsibilities include identifying the macro trends, values and mindsets that drive consumer behavior and mobility choices.

Before joining Nissan in 2006, she held various automotive research roles at General Motors and GM Holden. Alka holds a BA in Sociology from NYU, College of Arts and Sciences, and an MPA from the Wagner School of Public Service, NYU. Alka currently resides in New Jersey. In addition to keeping up with the lives of her two children and son in law, she enjoys travelling and discovering new places with her husband.