I’ve spoken with a lot of people over the last two years about privacy, data protection laws and people’s rights and specifically, what that means for us as researchers.

2020 was, well 2020. Part of the mad scramble to move everything online put a lot of pressure on us all. We had to totally re-imagine how we do research, everything was suddenly up for grabs.

There is a natural imbalance of power that exists between the researcher and the person they’re learning from. There are some things you can do which help to make the participant more comfortable.

Decision making capacity (or DMC) comes from the informed consent doctrine; an ethical principle that is pervasive in modern medicine, but is often overlooked when talking about consent in the context of design research.

Being aware of what we’re recording and what kind of processing we need to do to it not only helps communicate our intent, but it can also save a lot of work in synthesis.

When we talk about informed consent in design research, we usually talk about the artifact itself - maybe a digital or paper form, and what should be disclosed in it.

We’ve been making some improvements to the way we create and utilise consent forms in Consent Kit.

Our initial research uncovered the following problems with creating consent forms:

At Consent Kit, we believe that how companies handle and process the information we provide them is fast becoming a key factor in deciding which services to use.

In the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has published a helpful checklist, in line with the GDPR, for how you record and manage informed consent.

Before you do any research, you need to get evidence that the person you are learning from has understood your research, the potential consequences for them and that they have given you their permission to take part.

In 2016 I began working on a research project called Ethics Kit to understand how we could augment existing design thinking processes with ethical considerations; to ensure that the changes we are making benefit all aspects of society.