Building Inclusive Product Experiences: A Guide to SAP’s Inclusive Research Handbook

[KimberlyMcGee]

Building inclusive products begins with understanding all our users. When we understand their diverse needs, we improve their experience and unlock new opportunities for innovation and business growth. To help teams achieve this, SAP Design created the Inclusive Research Handbook—a practical resource designed to guide teams toward building better product experiences for everyone.

Whether you’re a researcher, designer, engineer, or product manager, this handbook is for you. It gives you the knowledge, best practices, and tools to create more inclusive products. With these resources, you can make a real difference in your users’ experiences—and your product’s success.

Showing the cover of the Inclusive Research Handbook by SAP along with two pages from the Introductory Pages ‘Welcome to the Inclusive Research Handbook, enriched by an illustration. The illustration is showing an office scene with a diverse group of five people in a lively working atmosphere grouped around a table and in front of a whiteboard. They represent different ages, genders, ethnicities, and disabilities.

What Is Inclusive Research?

Inclusive research is a fundamental approach to product development that helps us create solutions for everyone, not just some users. At its core, inclusive research:

• Includes Diverse Perspectives Throughout Development: Inclusive research brings together a wide range of people—from users with different backgrounds and abilities to team members across all roles—ensuring diverse perspectives are considered throughout product development.
• Enhances Existing Methods: Rather than being an additional step, inclusive research enhances traditional research methods by incorporating a wider range of perspectives.
• Helps Surface and Reduce Biases: By involving diverse participants and gathering perspectives from across all roles, inclusive research helps teams surface and address unintentional biases that might otherwise shape product design in ways that exclude certain users.
• Integrates Research Throughout the Development Process: Inclusive research isn’t a one-time effort but an ongoing approach that should be integrated into every stage of product development.
• Improves Products for Everyone: By considering a wider range of user needs and experiences, inclusive research often leads to innovations that benefit all users.

Why Inclusive Research Matters?

Breaks Away from the ‘Average User’ Mindset

Without an inclusive lens, products are often designed with an imagined ‘average user’ in mind— typically someone young, tech-savvy, and with access to the latest technology. With over 8 billion people worldwide, all bringing different perspectives in age, ability, culture, and technology access, there’s a big opportunity to create products for a broader audience. By incorporating inclusive research into the process, teams can better understand the full spectrum of user needs and develop products that work for a much broader, more diverse audience.

Enhances User Experience

Inclusive research transforms how we understand and improve our products by moving beyond assumptions about how people use them. By involving people from diverse backgrounds and experiences, we uncover insights that lead to better solutions for everyone. This approach helps us create products that meet the needs of users across different social and cultural contexts, lifestyles, and circumstances, resulting in experiences that work better for our diverse global user base.

Drives Innovation and Business Success

When we expand our research to include diverse perspectives, we often find new opportunities for innovation. This inclusive approach helps us create better products and expands our market reach by ensuring we’re not unintentionally excluding any groups of users. The result? Products with broader appeal that drive user satisfaction and adoption across global markets. This leads to stronger business outcomes and gives your product an edge in a diverse marketplace.

Ready to Take Your Research to The Next Level?

The handbook gives you tools to make your research more inclusive. Its five sections guide you through everything from planning to running research sessions.

Ready to take your research to the next level? Download the handbook today to access:

• Detailed inclusion criteria guidelines
• Best practices for building inclusive foundations
• Key considerations for planning and conducting inclusive research sessions
• Screening and recruiting strategies
• Guidance on adapting research methods for inclusive research

Together, we can create products that work better for everyone!

Get your digital copy of the Inclusive Research Handbook.