Building Trust with Hard-to-Reach Users: An Impact-Driven Research Framework
Building Trust with Hard-to-Reach Users: An Impact-Driven Research Framework
About This Talk
The hardest part of research isn't the framework — it's getting the right people to show up. Nikita Rochiramani will walk through how her team recruited attorneys, self-represented litigants, court administrators, and clerks — without incentives — to redesign the Michigan Supreme Court's public website.
Working within government policy constraints, limited recruitment options, and a highly regulated environment, the team built a purpose-driven recruitment strategy: framing the project as an access-to-justice initiative turned participants into genuine collaborators, not just research subjects.
Using this project as a case study, Nikita will walk through the end-to-end research process: identifying primary audiences through analytics, recruiting specialized users through trust-building and referrals, uncovering mental models through interviews and card sorting, and validating a new information architecture through tree testing. The result: navigation simplified from 19 categories down to 7, with improved findability for both attorneys and self-represented litigants.
You'll Learn
How to recruit hard-to-reach users without incentives, by framing the work as a shared mission rather than a research ask
How to build lasting stakeholder trust in highly regulated or resource-constrained environments
How to synthesize multiple research methods — interviews, card sorting, tree testing — into actionable design decisions
A repeatable framework for creating measurable research impact where trust is the real differentiator
Who It's For
Anyone working in government, healthcare, finance, nonprofits, or any environment where users are hard to reach and institutional constraints shape the work. Senior-level session — expect a detailed case study and practical technique, not the basics.
🎤 Speaker: Nikita Rochiramani
Nikita is an award-winning UX designer and strategist based in Lansing, MI, with a track record of data-informed design, system efficiency, and inclusive user experience across enterprise SaaS platforms. Over 9 years in the industry, she's brainstormed ideas, made design decisions, patiently listened to stakeholders, and absorbed last-minute client requests — all while hoping to recover a crashed Illustrator file or track down version #877236 of a Figma design. An accidental designer with both corporate and entrepreneurial experience, she's brought a practical, human-first lens to her work throughout. Outside of work, she's probably working out, reading, or trying to convince the world that eggs are as vegetarian as milk.
LinkedIn: nikita-rochiramani-2b50ab127
Website: https://www.studio-nikita.com/
🏠 Hosted by: Designed Forward — a coaching community for designers, researchers, and entrepreneurs
📅 Wednesday, November 4 | 9:30 AM PST / 12:30 PM EST
🖥️ This event is online only. A Zoom link will be emailed to registered attendees before the event.
People who made this event possible:
Designed Forward is a coaching community for designers and career-driven professionals — built on real accountability, honest feedback, and the belief that growth happens faster with people around you who actually push you forward.