Importance of a Trauma-Informed Approach in UX Research
Impact matters more than intentions when it comes to conducting UX research. Improving government services for the public can create unintentional harm for the people you are trying to help. To make government services work well for people during difficult times, you need to learn about how people navigate those difficult times.
By modifying your research activities and outputs with a trauma-informed approach, you reduce the risk of retraumatizing individuals while still learning about difficult experiences and producing better outcomes.
There are five core principles for a trauma-informed approach to UX research:
Reflection
Safety
Transparency
Mutuality
Empowerment
Reflection
Reflection requires continuous examination of your own assumptions, biases, and the power dynamics within the research process. This principle ensures your research practices do not inadvertently replicate harm or extract value from communities without reciprocity.
Define research goals inclusively: When framing the scope of engagement, consider who else should be included in the research, who has a stake, and who might be harmed by your work or its outcomes.
Acknowledge your frames of reference (or positionality): Recognize that your background and experiences shape how you interpret and understand the world and that, in your role, you represent the history and experiences your participant community has had with your project partners or other researchers. Address past failings openly and demonstrate why the community should trust you and work with you.
Identify power imbalances: There are inherent power dynamics in UX design where researchers decide topics, ask questions while participants answer, and shape insights — often without community confirmation. Consider how assumptions, perspectives, and biases determine who benefits and who is left out or might be harmed by what you create.
Safety
Safety means creating an environment where participants feel physically and emotionally secure throughout the research process. This principle is essential when discussing sensitive topics or traumatic experiences that may arise during the session.
Prepare participants before sessions: Share what topics will be covered and explain why you'd like their input, especially when asking about negative or stressful experiences, so participants know what to expect.
Check in during sessions: Pause to get permission to continue, sign-posting different topics before you start discussing them.
Avoid playing therapist: Refrain from deciding for participants whether a session should stop, if a topic is too much, or if they would like to revisit it later — your role is to hold the space for them to make those choices.
Transparency
Transparency involves openly communicating the parameters, limitations, and implications of the research relationship. This principle builds trust by ensuring participants understand their rights and your constraints.
Communicate participant power clearly: Explain in the consent process what control participants have to shape the conversation or revoke access to their contributions without penalty (such as loss of compensation).
Clarify your influence over outcomes: Be explicit about what control you have (or don't have) over the final product or service you're researching.
Mutuality
Mutuality ensures that research is a reciprocal exchange rather than a one-way extraction of information. This principle acknowledges that participants are contributing valuable expertise and should receive something meaningful in return.
Provide value back to participants: Offer different ways of engaging in the research, so people can share their preferred format. Provide resources for additional information on the topic, and whenever possible, share the outcomes of the research.
Empowerment
Empowerment means actively sharing power with participants and ensuring their voices shape the research and design outcomes, which will make your research richer and more accurately reflect the needs of the community. This principle shifts participants from data sources into collaborative partners.
Create space for participant storytelling: Build time into your design and research activities for people to tell their stories in their own words, beyond just meeting your research objectives.
Return value quickly: Share benefits with the participant community, ideally, as rapidly as you gain insights from their lived experiences. Ideally, they will benefit from what you are designing, but that may take time and may no longer be relevant to the people you have engaged with.
Applying a Trauma-Informed Approach to Helping the Public Access Services
While working with a federal agency on a product to help people access addiction treatment, I needed to understand how those with substance use disorder and their friends and family navigate and make decisions about support services. Reflecting on how to approach this challenge to ensure I did not risk the safety of people in crisis, I narrowed my research participant pool to only those on a path to recovery and their support networks and did not engage with anyone experiencing active addiction.
I reached out to people in this group and was transparent about what I wanted to discuss, so they wouldn't be surprised by the topics. During the interviews, I reminded participants that they could skip a topic or revisit it if they preferred, and that they were empowered to stop the interview at any time. When people struggled to answer a question or became upset, I paused and waited for them to decide if they wanted to continue.
At the end of each session, I made space for them to share anything else or ask questions about the project, and I shared resources for a national network of addiction support groups. I later shared the final product with the people I interviewed and offered to speak with them about it.
Working with governmental partners can limit some of the ways you can share the outcomes of your research and how it impacts the final product, but you can still shape your research process to reduce potential harm to the people whose experiences inform your work.
At Aquia, we support federal partners who serve the public during some of the most critical and challenging times of their lives, and deeply understand the importance of trauma-informed research.
Through our work on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ Disability Benefits Crew, our UX team members often meet Veterans and their loved ones during critical times of need, when they are dealing with health challenges, financial stress, or the loss of a loved one. These moments demand research and design approaches that prioritize safety, dignity, and empowerment — ensuring that the digital services we build honor their service and expedite access to the benefits they've earned.
If you’d like to learn more about how we approach these sensitive situations using trauma-informed research principles, contact us at federal@aquia.us.
Additional Resources
You can reduce the chance of causing harm in your UX research by considering the five core principles outlined above. Learn more about recognizing and responding to trauma UX design research with the following resources created for and used by government teams:
USA: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) outlines six Guiding Principles to a Trauma Informed Approach
USA: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Recognize and respond to trauma in participants
UK: Gov.uk Researching emotionally sensitive subjects
