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.

Informed consent is an exchange of information in which both of the following must occur:

  • The researcher informs the participant about what involvement in the study entails and the potential consequences of participating.
  • The participant fully understands the terms of the study and can make an informed decision about whether they would like to voluntarily participate.

A research consent form (also known as an informed consent form) serves as written documentation of this exchange.

A downloadable template can be found here, but for the best results, please continue reading for more information about how you may adapt the template to better fit your study needs.

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While researchers may be well-intended in their hopes of learning about user behaviors, the intent does not matter nearly as much as the execution of the study and its impact. There are many documented cases of unethical research and its dangerous outcomes. One famous example of research abuse is the Nuremberg doctors’ trial. The doctors were placed on trial for war crimes, due to harmful and lethal experiments on inmates at Nazi concentration camps. This trial led to the creation of the Nuremberg Code, which is a set of ethics principles for human experimentation.

The Tuskegee syphilis study is also notorious for its lethal impact on more than 100 of the 400 African American participants, all of whom were not fully informed on the nature of the experiment, which studied the effects of untreated syphilis. This trial led to creation of the National Research Act and the Belmont Report, which outlines additional “ethical principles and guidelines for the protection of human subjects” for both biomedical and behavioral research.

To avoid further harm, most research institutions (like universities) have established institutional review boards (IRBs) that provide ethical oversight and approval authority on any planned research. Whether your organization has an IRB or not, informed consent is a fundamental part of an ethical research program that respects participants and does not take advantage of (or deceive) them.

While most user research with digital products will typically be nonclinical in nature (and, thus, relatively low-risk), there is still risk to the participants' wellbeing, especially if the tasks they conduct during the study cause temporary hardship, distress, discomfort, or pain. This is particularly true for vulnerable populations who are already experiencing these things due to injury, abuse, trauma, or general misfortune. To be clear, we can still do research on sensitive topics or with vulnerable or disadvantaged populations, but we must take extra precautions and communicate the study’s potential impact in advance to protect participants’ wellbeing.

It’s worth noting that there are populations who are vulnerable or incapable of granting informed consent, due to the criteria of the second bullet point: the participant’s understanding and voluntary participation. For example, children/minors, adults with cognitive impairments, low or no literacy, or mentally incapacitated individuals (e.g., unconscious or under the influence of alcohol or drugs) may not be capable of fully understanding the terms of the study or lack the full agency needed to make voluntary decisions (at times relying upon guardians to make these decisions). Thus, these parties cannot offer informed consent on their own, and researchers need the consent of their guardian before conducting any research, no matter how low-risk.

Similarly, inmates and prisoners are already performing an involuntary task, so the second criteria, voluntary participation, is not always possible. The decisions with these populations are rarely fully voluntary, and voluntary withdrawal may not be seen as a valid option due to fear of authorities or retribution. Furthermore, there may be additional legal requirements like consent of a prisoner representative and approval from an IRB before any research is conducted.

Writing out consent forms may seem like unnecessary work when you could just tell the participant what the study will be like. However, written consent forms are critical for a number of reasons:

  • They consistently inform every participant with the same level of detail, whether they are the first or the 1,000th participant in the study and regardless of which researcher works with them. The written documentation serves as a paper trail to ensure that the researcher satisfactorily informed all participants and that all the key study details were covered every single time.
  • They hold researchers accountable to protect the welfare and wellbeing of study participants and their data. A participant may forget what they initially consented to, but a signed form empowers the participant to be in control of their participation and protect their own welfare, wellbeing, and data, should the researcher deviate from the original plan.
  • They prevent the research team (to some extent) from running a poor study. Granted, there can still be poor studies with consent forms, but consent-form writing helps researchers think through all the nuances of their study, including the activities the participant will do, the data that is truly needed, and how that data will be protected during and after the session.

That said, there are exceptions where a consent form is not necessary. A/B testing, for example, can be characterized as routine use of a product, and therefore, does not require additional involvement on the part of the participant. Plus, data from any single user is used only as part of a bigger statistic.

You may also not need a full-length consent form for an intercept study, which is the equivalent of interrupting someone while they are in the middle of a task to get their thoughts on that particular task. That said, you should still begin the intercept study with an agreement page containing a brief summary of how the information they provide will be used, stored, shared, and deleted. Also, if you are physically intercepting them in a public location, you should still get written permission from any physical establishment in which you are recruiting, to avoid getting in trouble for soliciting on a private property — which is illegal in many countries.

While you can repurpose this consent-form template for future research, remember that your consent forms should be carefully considered and crafted based on the unique needs and format of each study.

 In general, a consent form should have the following information:

  • High-level purpose of the study
    Provide just enough detail to inform the participant about the nature of the study, without giving away any hypotheses or details that may skew behavior during the study. That said, this statement shouldn’t be as vague as “to learn about our customers.” Consider mentioning the objective of the research — for instance, to improve an existing product or strategize for future service development.
  • Format of the study (activities, tasks, and duration)
    Describe the types of activities and tasks the participant may complete. This is where you can say how the data will be collected and to what extent the participant can expect to interact with the researcher(s). With that, the duration of the study should be clearly stated. “Umbrella” consent forms in which the user consents to an indefinite timeframe of research for current and future studies can be very problematic in their lack of specificity and susceptibility to abuse (and, generally, participants probably will not want to participate in something that has no defined end point).
  • Voluntary-participation clause
    While research participants usually understand that they have volunteered to participate in the study, it may not always be clear that withdrawal is voluntary, or that it’s permissible for them to change their minds. Signing paperwork often can feel very “final,” so this clause helps to reassure that the participant is always in control of their participation.
  • Participant-data handling
    Explain how personal data, findings, and recordings (if applicable) will be handled by answering key questions like:
    • Will data be anonymized? If so, how much of it will be anonymized?
    • How will it be used, accessed, and stored? Who has access to this information?
    • Will it ever be published anywhere?
    • When will the raw, recorded data be deleted (if ever)?
    • Can the participant request that information is deleted?
  • Consent statement
    While many consent forms will simply have a signature block for participants to indicate consent or a single checkbox labeled, I consent to the terms of this study, this section should be carefully formatted and worded to instill confidence and give the participant agency and choices over their involvement.
  • Multiple checkboxes 
    Instead of requiring the participant to agree to a blanket statement, consider a modular consent structure, allowing participants to consent to certain parts or aspects of the study but not others. For example, participants may consent to participating in the study but may opt out of recordings or data publication. So, instead of I agree and consent to the terms of this study, understanding that our session may be recorded, your consent form may include a series of checkboxes:
    • I agree to the terms of this study and consent to participate.
    • I consent to audio being recorded during the session for analysis purposes.
    • I consent to video being recorded during the session for analysis purposes.

This modular consent form increases the likelihood that the participant will participate and contribute data to the study, even if they do not consent to recordings.

Other optional information to include, if applicable:

  • Compensation
    If you will be providing compensation for the participants’ time, be it monetary or as free products or services, clearly state it in the consent form. Regardless which method you choose, make it clear that compensation is not based on the participants’ abilities or on whether they provide positive feedback. Especially during any form of “testing,” participants can sometimes feel like they are being tested for their abilities and performance, rather than the design.
    Tip: For in-person testing, it helps to reinforce this idea by paying participants at the beginning of the session, before tasks begin, right after they sign the consent form.
  • Parent or guardian involvement and approval
    If your participant is a minor or an adult with a guardian, a parent or guardian will likely accompany them into the session. Include a designated Parent or guardian signature block, to make it clear the signature belongs to a parent or guardian and that the participant was not coerced into signing. Any special considerations regarding studies with minors or other adults with guardians should be clearly communicated in the consent form.
  • Information (or debrief) sheet
    Some study formats may warrant an additional information sheet (separate from the signed consent form) which contains a more detailed description of the study’s purpose. Such an information sheet is usually given to the participant at the end of the study, to avoid priming them to behave differently during the study.

Lastly, regardless if you use a separate information sheet or not, you should always give the participant a copy of the signed consent form, so they can refer to it after the study. This ensures the participant knows what they signed and who to contact for further questions about the research.

Conclusion

Human-centered design begins with human-centered research, and, as such, improvements to a design should never come at the cost of another person’s wellbeing. Getting informed consent from participants is critical for researchers to carry out fair, transparent, and accurate research while doing their part to minimize harm. By writing a thorough consent form, researchers can think through important details of their study and build trust and confidence with participants.

Resources

Shuster, E. Fifty Years Later: The Significance of the Nuremberg Code. New England Journal of Medicine 337, 20 (1997), 1436-1440.

The Belmont Report. Office for Human Research Protections, 1979.
https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/belmont-report/read-the-belmont-report/index.html.