Inclusive user research: A practical guide for ethical UX

Decisions made during the research process, like how participants are recruited, what methods are used, or which tools are required, can unintentionally exclude people.

That might include participants who use assistive technology, speak different languages, have limited internet access, or navigate the world with different cognitive or physical needs.

Whoever it is you exclude, you do so at a cost to your product.

In this article, we look at what inclusive user research means in practice. We highlight common points of exclusion and share ways to build research practices that are accessible, representative, and more thoughtful by default.

To help shape this piece, we spoke with Geoffrey Crofte, Senior UX Lead and Accessibility Officer at Groupe Foyer and author of ‘What Designers Need to Know About Accessibility’. His work bridges design systems and inclusive practice, offering a clear and grounded perspective on what it takes to get inclusion right.

Inclusive user research is the practice of planning, conducting, and analyzing research in ways that account for the full spectrum and intersectionality of human diversity.

This includes—but isn’t limited to—differences in ability, age, race, gender identity, language, culture, location, socioeconomic status, and tech literacy. It’s about ensuring that research sessions accurately reflect the diversity of the groups of people who use your digital products.

In practice, this means checking whether your screeners, research methods and materials, and tools unintentionally exclude people. It involves looking beyond the ‘average user’ to include voices that are often excluded from the research process.

The risks of skipping this step are real, and they impact your user.

“When we design research that only includes a narrow slice of people—oftentimes people who resemble us, because that’s how humans work by default—we miss out on new perspectives that are tremendously valuable in the conceptualization phases,” Geoffrey told us.

“And we risk building products that exclude or even harm others. It reminds me of the first Apple Health app. The first version didn’t include a menstruation tracking feature; tell me no women were involved in its design without telling me.”

Inclusive UX research leads to better product decisions grounded in user needs. And when you prioritize inclusivity in research and design, you often find that it benefits all users, not just the ones you had in mind.

To prioritize inclusion, you need to recognize exclusion. Here are some of the most common exclusion points in inclusive user research, backed by research and best practices:

Geoffrey Crofte, Senior UX Lead and Accessibility Officer at Groupe Foyer, shares a candid example of how exclusion can quietly take root, even with good intentions:

“I can’t speak for all designers, but I can share how we, at Foyer, unintentionally exclude people, simply through the way our process is set up.

“We created a ‘User Club’ made up of volunteer clients, recruited through our app and digital touchpoints. When it comes time to reach out, we use email, which means, by default, we’re excluding:

“As a result, the people who respond and participate the most are often retired white men. Why white men? Partly because we’re pulling from our existing client base, which doesn’t reflect the full diversity of Luxembourg’s population. That creates a kind of feedback loop: we keep hearing from the same kind of profile, which shapes our understanding of ‘the user,’ and continues to exclude others without us even realizing it.

“We know it now, so we can now actively act against this loop and start recruiting from other channels.”

Recognizing those blind spots is the first step toward building more equitable research practices.

Inclusive research frameworks often name four core pillars: access, relevance, trust, and recognition. These create a strong foundation for equity in UX research, ensuring studies reach the right participants, resonate with their realities, and build mutual respect between researchers and users.

But in our chat with Geoffrey Crofte, Senior UX Lead and Accessibility Officer at Groupe Foyer, we uncovered a fifth pillar worth adding to the mix: support at the organizational level.

You can’t just ‘do inclusive UX research’ in a corner of your process. If your business doesn’t prioritize it, fund it, or bake it into strategy, it won’t drive real change.

Without leadership buy-in, resourcing, and internal education, even the best-intentioned efforts can fall flat.

In the sections that follow, we walk through each of the five pillars in detail—what they mean in practice, where exclusion risks creep in, and how teams can start embedding them into their UX research processes.

Accessibility refers to whether people can physically, cognitively, and technologically take part in a study. That includes everything from being able to load a prototype on their device, to understanding the language used, to navigating a session with or without assistive technology.

It’s the first barrier to inclusive UX research—and often the easiest to overlook. Even if your study is technically 'open to everyone,' participation may still be limited by practical constraints: internet speed, device compatibility, session timing, tool accessibility, or language fluency.

Here’s how you can improve access:

Relevance means that:

Too often, relevance is treated as a byproduct—something you hope will happen if your screener’s wide enough or your questions are clear.

If your study doesn’t account for people’s real-world contexts, how they live, work, or access tech, you’ll collect surface-level data at best. This is especially critical when working with underrepresented groups, where assumptions about language, culture, or digital fluency can quickly skew the results.

At the same time, users need to understand why your research matters. What will their feedback change? How will it improve their experience with your product or service? If it’s not clear why their voice matters, the research can feel one-sided, and people may not want to take part.

To highlight and optimize the relevance of your research:

If participants don’t feel safe, respected, and clearly informed, they’re less likely to share openly or join at all. This is especially true for people from communities that have been historically excluded from research or harmed by biased systems.

To build and maintain trust:

Too often, participants from marginalized or underserved communities are asked to share their experiences without seeing any follow-through, credit, or clear benefit. This can create research fatigue, skepticism, or a sense that their contribution didn’t matter.

This fifth pillar was shaped through our conversation with Geoffrey, and highlights how this guide builds on established research by bringing in lived industry experience.

While existing frameworks lay a solid foundation, they often miss a key ingredient: organizational support. Inclusive UX research doesn’t happen in isolation. It needs space, funding, and leadership buy-in to make a difference.

Geoffrey calls this an inclusive mindset at the organizational level—embedding inclusive research into a company’s culture, priorities, and decision-making processes.

That means:

Without this kind of cultural shift, inclusive research can feel like a side project—or get ignored altogether.

As Geoffrey explains:

“At Foyer, I’m not afraid to say that some high-level folks lack cultural knowledge and education. And that’s okay—we all have different backgrounds. But that’s why it’s important to empower people, especially designers, to bridge the gap between their knowledge and the diverse expectations of our clients.”

Organizational support is what turns inclusive research from a nice idea into a practice that drives real change.

Inclusion should be built into every step of the research process. In this section, we look at what inclusive research looks like in practice, with specific considerations for each stage of the research lifecycle.

Inclusive research starts with inclusive recruitment. If the people you speak to don’t reflect the diversity of your users, your insights won’t either. That means being intentional about who you recruit, how you recruit them, and what barriers you may be unknowingly creating.

Here are some key practices:

Start by defining what diversity means for your product. Are you considering a range of abilities, languages, income levels, tech access, or geographic locations? Then recruit accordingly—and leave ample time to get the participants you need.

“Give people more time to respond to your call for participation, so you can build a more representative panel,” Geoffrey says. “And don’t just say everyone’s welcome—speak directly to underrepresented communities and open up diverse channels.”

Remote research opens the door to people who might be unable to attend in person—those with limited mobility, caregiving responsibilities, rural locations, or social anxiety. Offer flexible scheduling and allow reschedules when needed. Accessibility also means making space for real life.

Fair pay is an inclusion issue. Compensation helps remove financial barriers, respects people’s time, and invites broader participation, especially from communities who may be underpaid, underrepresented, or balancing multiple responsibilities.

“Minorities that are left behind are also folks who earn way less than the average. Depending on your country, one hour's participation in a session should be around €50 retribution” Geoffrey notes.

Be clear about the incentive upfront.

User personas can help teams build empathy, but they can also reinforce bias if they focus too much on surface traits. Instead, center behavior, context, and access needs. Tools like Jobs-To-Be-Done and Empathy Maps offer richer, more flexible ways to represent users.

Your research questions shape the insights you get. You need to write tasks and prompts that don’t confuse, exclude, or bias the way people respond.

That starts with three essentials:

Plain language means writing in a way that's clear, direct, and easy for everyone to understand, regardless of reading level, language background, or cognitive abilities.

Instead of writing one-size-fits-all prompts, design neutral, flexible scenarios. For example:

You're asking people to imagine a situation, make decisions, and share feedback based on their own lived experience. A little setup helps a lot.

Maze’s Perfect Question feature utilizes AI to identify bias, vagueness, or confusion in your tasks and phrasing, then suggests a clearer, more inclusive version on the spot. Whether you’re running moderated sessions or async surveys, it helps you ask better from the start. And with AI follow-ups, you can trigger contextual, probing questions based on each participant’s response.

This is the part most people think of when they hear inclusive research: running the actual sessions, talking to participants, and gathering insights.

At this stage, inclusion means removing barriers that make it harder for people to participate, communicate, or give useful feedback. That includes the format you choose, the tools you use, and how you structure each task.

Here’s how to conduct your research:

Secondary research means using existing data and insights on inclusive product best practices to inform your study before collecting any new feedback.

This can include:

Doing this early helps you understand the context your users are coming from, spot potential barriers, and avoid asking biased or repetitive questions. It also lets you design focused, relevant tasks so participants aren’t stuck explaining things you could’ve already known.

Generally, usability testing often assumes ideal conditions—fast internet, full vision and hearing, mouse or touch input, and no cognitive or motor barriers. That leaves out a wide range of real user experiences.

To design more inclusively, run dedicated research studies focused on accessible design. This might include:

You can also adapt usability tests to reflect everyday constraints, for example:

You don’t need a separate study just for accessibility or inclusion. Instead, make it part of how you run every research session.

This approach helps you spot exclusion earlier, without adding more work for your team or more burden for your users. And it sends a clear message: every voice matters, every time.

After the research, be just as intentional about how you analyze, share, and act on insights.

This links directly back to the recognition pillar we discussed earlier. It’s about acknowledging their time, effort, and expertise throughout the process, including at the end.

When wrapping up:

Say thank you like you mean it. A generic auto-response doesn’t cut it. Make your message personal and clear about the value of their contribution. Even a simple sentence like “We’ll use this feedback to improve onboarding for first-time users” helps participants understand their impact.

Use simple, flexible options like bank transfers, gift cards, or vouchers—and make sure they’re easy to understand and access. Slow or complex systems send the wrong message, so make sure compensation isn’t an afterthought.

And if your study asks for more time or effort (like diary tasks or follow-up sessions), increase the payment to match. Work with participants to find compensation that’s actually beneficial to them.

Stay in touch and encourage participants to share their feedback proactively. If their input leads to a product change or design improvement, let them know. Recognition is stronger when people see the results. Offer opt-ins for future studies or research panels. Don’t assume; ask.

These steps build trust and credibility, especially among communities who’ve historically been excluded from product development. And they shift research from being a one-off transaction to part of an ongoing, more equitable relationship.

Inclusive research is a practice. And like any practice, it gets better with structure.

This checklist combines practical tips from this guide with questions shared by Geoffrey Crofte, Senior UX Lead Designer at Groupe Foyer. Use it to gut-check your research and design process at every stage—from who you involve, to how you listen, to how you wrap up.

Inclusive UX research is the result of intentional choices: who you reach out to, how you frame your questions, the tools you use, and the mindset you bring.

At Maze, we help teams scale user research without sacrificing depth or representation. Whether you’re recruiting globally, refining your questions with AI, or running unmoderated tests, Maze gives you the tools to make research fast, flexible, and inclusive by default.