Research Ethics Policy

Version 1.0 · Effective 6/30/26

Contents

Introduction

Doodle Design Co. is a creative studio. We believe design does not happen in a vacuum — it is embedded in societies, shaped by power structures, and experienced by people whose lives are profoundly different from one another. Understanding those differences, and the forces that produce them, is not separate from the work of design. It is central to it.

So we do research.

Our research is not market research, and it is not client work. It is independent, publicly published inquiry into questions we believe matter beyond any individual project: how society shapes the lives of its most excluded members, how the ethics and morals of a culture show up in its policies and behaviors, how psychology and sociology influence the decisions of individuals and governments, and how human beings relate to art and design as a form of meaning, identity, and power.

We publish our findings on our own platform — openly, because we believe the public deserves honest inquiry, not just polished products.

This document — the Research Ethics Policy, or REP — is the framework we hold ourselves to when we do that work. It sets out what we study, how we study it, what we owe to the people and communities our research concerns, and exactly what we do when something goes wrong. It is written for our team and for the public, because both deserve to understand how we operate.

The REP is a living document. As DDC's research program grows, we will update it — recording what changed and why in the Changelog at the end.

1. The Mission and Scope of DDC Research

1.1 What We Study and Why

DDC's research program focuses on four interconnected areas:

  1. The impact of society on marginalized minority groups.1 We study how social, political, and economic systems shape the lives and opportunities of communities that have been pushed to the edges of power and inclusion — and what that means for design, culture, and public life.
  2. The ethics and morals of society. We examine how moral frameworks operate in the real world — in laws, institutions, cultural norms, and individual behavior — and how those frameworks include or exclude, protect or harm, different groups of people.
  3. The psychological and sociological2 forces that influence society and government. We research how human psychology, group dynamics, cultural patterns, and institutional structures shape the way societies organize themselves and the decisions governments make.
  4. Human interaction with art and design. We study how people relate to creative work — what it means to them, how it shapes their identity and experience, and how design functions as both a cultural force and a deeply personal one.

We study these areas because design is never neutral. Every visual choice, every spatial decision, every piece of communication exists within a social context. Understanding that context — rigorously and honestly — is part of doing design responsibly.

1.2 Who This Policy Applies To

This policy applies to every person who conducts, contributes to, analyzes, writes up, reviews, or approves research published under the Doodle Design Co. name — full-time employees and contractors alike. Contractor status does not lower the bar. Anyone doing research work for Doodle agrees to this policy as a condition of that work, the same way they agree to confidentiality or technology terms.

1.3 How This Policy Fits With Other DDC Policies

The REP works alongside Doodle's AI Ethics & Usage Policy, which governs how AI tools may and may not be used across the company, and the Company Technology Policy, which governs device and account use. Where research work involves AI assistance or company technology, those policies set the baseline; this policy adds the research-specific obligations on top of them. Where any two policies appear to conflict in a research context, the more protective standard applies.

1.4 Companion Policies

Three companion policies are in development and will sit alongside the REP once finalized:

  1. Source Citation & Verification Standards — the specific process for how DDC credits and checks its sources across all research output.
  2. Research Data Privacy & Retention — how participant and research data is stored, secured, accessed, and eventually deleted.
  3. Publishing & Editorial Review — the step-by-step editorial review process before any DDC research goes public.

Until those are finalized, the principles in this policy govern those areas as well, in spirit if not in full procedural detail.

2. Core Research Principles

2.1 Honesty Over Convenience

We report what we actually find — not what would be more exciting for an audience, more comfortable for Doodle, or easier to publish. If a finding is inconclusive, complicated, or contradicts something we believed going in, it is reported that way. Research credibility is built on the quality and integrity of the work, not on how confident the conclusion sounds.

In practice: Inconclusive, negative, or uncomfortable findings are published with the same weight and visibility as positive ones. They are not buried in a footnote, softened in the framing, or quietly left out. No one at DDC has their standing or future projects tied to whether a finding lands favorably.

2.2 Research Is Not Marketing

There is a meaningful difference between research that starts with a question and research that starts with a conclusion. DDC does the former. If a piece of research is connected to a position Doodle holds, a value it wants to promote, or a story it wants to tell, that connection must be disclosed before the work begins — and the research must be genuinely open to disconfirming evidence.3 We do not conduct studies to win arguments we have already decided we are right about.

In practice: Every project's scope document (see 4.3) records in writing why DDC is studying the question — including any stake DDC has in the findings. If the finished piece ends up supporting that interest, the published version says so plainly. If the findings do not support DDC's position, they are published anyway.

2.3 Do No Harm

Research about marginalized communities, social injustice, and human psychology carries real risk of causing harm — to participants, to communities studied, and to the public conversation more broadly. Sensational framing, decontextualized findings, and extractive research4 can reinforce the very harms they claim to examine. DDC takes that risk seriously. "We didn't mean to" is not an acceptable explanation after the fact.

In practice: Before any project begins, the research team identifies who could be harmed by the research — in its conduct or in its publication — and documents how those risks will be managed. This is a required section of every scope document (see 4.3). If no credible harm management plan can be constructed, the project does not proceed.

2.4 Community-First Research

When DDC's research involves or directly concerns a marginalized community, that community's interests take precedence over DDC's publishing goals. We do not extract experiences and stories from communities to build our platform and then disappear. We commit to transparency about who we are, what we are doing with the work, and how findings will be shared back with the people whose lives they concern.

This principle draws on the framework of Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR),5 which holds that research done with and for a community produces more honest, more relevant, and more ethical findings than research done on a community from the outside. DDC applies this framework where direct community engagement is involved, and its spirit where it is not.

In practice: For every project involving direct engagement with a marginalized community, DDC identifies at the start of the project how findings will be returned to that community — whether through a plain-language summary, a direct share of the published piece, a community review before publication, or another method. This commitment is documented in the scope and followed through before the project is closed (see 3.8).

2.5 Researcher Positionality and Reflexivity

Every researcher brings a personal history, social position, and set of assumptions to the work they do. These factors shape what questions get asked, which sources feel credible, and how findings get framed. Acknowledging this — rather than pretending research can be conducted from nowhere — is a basic requirement of responsible inquiry.6

In practice: For any project involving direct community engagement or research on a community that differs significantly from the researcher's own social position, the lead researcher documents their positionality in the project scope — describing how their own background and identity may shape their approach, and what steps they are taking to account for it. This is not a disqualifying exercise; it is an honest one.

2.6 Accountability for What We Publish

Whoever leads a piece of research and whoever reviews and approves it for publication are both accountable for its accuracy and ethical integrity. "The AI drafted it," "I didn't have time to check," and "it looked right" are not acceptable explanations after the fact — because each of those things should have been caught before publication. The review process in Section 4.5 exists so those explanations never become necessary.

In practice: Every published piece has an internal record in Notion naming the lead researcher and the reviewer who signed off before publication, even when the public-facing version does not carry an individual byline.

3. Community-Engaged Research Standards

3.1 Two Modes of Research

DDC's research takes two distinct forms, and the obligations in this section apply differently to each.

External research involves studying communities, behaviors, or social phenomena from the outside — analyzing published studies, reviewing existing data, examining policy documents and cultural artifacts — without directly engaging community members as participants. The sourcing, attribution, and publication standards in Section 4 govern this work in full, along with the harm analysis requirement in 2.3.

Direct participant research involves engaging real people as participants — through interviews, surveys, co-design sessions,7 focus groups, or similar methods. All of the standards in this section apply in full to any research of this kind.

The ethical stakes are higher when participants belong to marginalized communities — groups that have historically been misrepresented, exploited, or harmed by outside researchers.8 Additional care and specific planning are required in these cases, as described throughout this section.

3.2 Informed Consent9

Anyone who participates in DDC research must be told, in plain language and before they participate:

  1. What the research is about and what questions it is trying to answer.
  2. How their information will be used and where it will be published.
  3. Whether they will be identified by name or kept anonymous.
  4. Whether any AI tool is active during the session (see 5.5).
  5. Their right to stop at any time without consequence.
  6. How to contact DDC after the session if they have questions or concerns.

Consent is not a formality buried in fine print. It is a real exchange — a genuine conversation, or a written statement the participant actually reads and understands before the session begins.

In practice: DDC maintains a standard consent script and form, adapted to the context and language needs of each project. A record of consent — a signed form, a written confirmation, or a contemporaneous note of verbal agreement — is saved in the project's Notion file. For participants whose first language is not English, DDC provides consent materials in a language they can meaningfully engage with.

3.3 Voluntary Participation

Participation is always voluntary. Participants may withdraw at any point, without needing to give a reason, and without it affecting any relationship they have with Doodle. No one is pressured, misled, or placed in a situation where saying no feels difficult or costly.

In practice: Recruitment messages and session scripts are written so that declining or stopping early is described neutrally — not as a problem, a disappointment, or an inconvenience to Doodle. A participant who stops partway through is thanked the same way as one who completes the session, and receives any compensation owed under 3.5.

3.4 Protecting Vulnerable Participants10

Extra care applies when research involves:

  1. Minors — anyone under 18 requires parental or guardian consent, in addition to the minor's own assent where they are old enough to meaningfully give it.
  2. People with cognitive or communication disabilities — consent processes are adapted to ensure they are genuinely understood, not just formally completed.
  3. People in positions of institutional or social pressure — for example, individuals in communities where agreeing to participate might feel expected or required even when it is not.
  4. People recounting trauma or distressing experiences — consent explicitly acknowledges they can stop or redirect the conversation at any point, for any reason, with no explanation needed.

In practice: Before recruitment begins, the lead researcher documents in the project scope whether any of the above categories are likely to apply. Where they do, a second team member reviews and approves the consent plan in writing before any outreach begins.

3.5 Incentives and Compensation

Not every project compensates participants. When one does, compensation must:

  1. Be proportional to the time, effort, and inconvenience involved — not so high that it places undue pressure on the decision to participate.
  2. Be disclosed clearly before the session begins, not offered afterward as a surprise or reward.
  3. Be pro-rated if a participant ends the session early — no one loses what they have already earned.

DDC does not pay referral or "finder's" fees for bringing in participants. When compensation is offered to vulnerable participants, particular care is taken to ensure it informs their decision rather than overrides it.

In practice: Compensation type and amount are decided and documented in the project scope before recruitment begins, so comparable participants receive comparable treatment and there is a clear record if the method is ever questioned.

3.6 Data Minimization and Anonymization11

DDC collects only the information a piece of research actually requires. Participant data is anonymized by default unless a participant has specifically and knowingly agreed to be identified — for example, in a named testimonial or community portrait they have reviewed and approved in its final form.

Recordings, transcripts, and raw notes are treated as sensitive material. They are:

  1. Stored in a restricted project folder in Google Drive, accessible only to people actively working on that project.
  2. Not shared outside the immediate research effort without a documented reason.
  3. Deleted or fully anonymized within 90 days of a project's conclusion, unless a longer retention period is explicitly documented and justified.

A full Research Data Privacy & Retention policy is in development and will replace this baseline once finalized.

In practice: The lead researcher is responsible for confirming, within the 90-day window, that raw participant files have been deleted or anonymized. That confirmation is recorded in the project's Notion file.

3.7 Participant Data Rights

Any participant can ask what information DDC holds about them and request that it be corrected or deleted, regardless of where they are located. For participants based in the EU or UK, this reflects their legal rights under the GDPR.12

DDC will act on an access or deletion request within 30 days of receiving it. Once participant data has been fully anonymized and is no longer traceable to an individual, these rights no longer apply to that data — because it is no longer identifiable as theirs.

In practice: Data rights requests are sent to hi@sharpsticker.store and logged in Notion with the date received and the date resolved, so DDC can demonstrate — to the participant or to a regulator — that it consistently meets the 30-day window.

3.8 Returning Findings to the Community

When DDC's research is about a marginalized community, that community should not be the last to see the findings. This is not a courtesy — it is a core ethical obligation. Research that extracts from a community and gives nothing back in return reproduces the very power imbalances that often harm those communities in the first place.4

At the start of every relevant project, DDC identifies in writing how findings will be returned to the community whose experiences inform them. This may include:

  1. A plain-language summary shared before or alongside public publication.
  2. A direct share of the published piece with community contacts.
  3. An invitation for community members to review a draft before it goes public.
  4. A note in the published piece acknowledging the community's contribution and how to reach DDC with feedback or disagreement.

In practice: The method for returning findings is documented in the project scope, and the lead researcher confirms in Notion that it was carried out before the project is marked complete.

4. Research Integrity and Publication Standards

4.1 Attribution and Sourcing

Every external source — a study, a dataset, a news report, another researcher's published work — is credited clearly enough that a reader could locate it independently. DDC does not present someone else's finding as its own original insight, and does not make factual claims without a traceable primary source.13

In practice: Every claim in a published piece that relies on an external source includes either a hyperlink or a citation specific enough to locate the source. Phrases like "studies show" or "research suggests" with no source attached do not go out under Doodle's name.

4.2 Distinguishing Fact From Interpretation

DDC's published research clearly separates what the evidence actually shows from what DDC believes it means. Readers should always be able to distinguish between a documented finding and an interpretation, argument, or recommendation DDC is offering on the basis of it.

In practice: The reviewer described in 4.5 reads every draft specifically for this distinction, flagging sentences where DDC's interpretation is framed as if it were an established fact.

4.3 Defined Scope and Timelines

Every DDC research project begins with a written scope document in Notion before any research work starts. The scope document records:

  1. The research question or focus.
  2. Why DDC is studying it — including any stake DDC has in the findings (see 2.2).
  3. The planned research methods, and whether direct participant engagement is involved.
  4. A positionality note from the lead researcher where relevant (see 2.5).
  5. Who could be harmed by the research and how those risks will be managed (see 2.3).
  6. If direct participant engagement is involved: the community, the consent plan, and the method for returning findings (see Section 3).
  7. Any conflicts of interest (see 4.4).
  8. The planned conclusion date and publication format.

Open-ended projects with no planned conclusion are not approved. If a project genuinely needs more time, the scope is renewed in writing — a deliberate decision, not an oversight.

4.4 Conflicts of Interest14

Anyone with a personal, financial, or professional relationship that could reasonably bias a piece of research must disclose it in writing in the project scope before work begins. This does not automatically disqualify them from the project — but it means the conflict is visible and accounted for, particularly in who is selected to review the work under 4.5.

Where a conflict of interest exists, the reviewer must be someone with no connection to it.

4.5 Review Before Anything Goes Public

No DDC research goes public without review by at least one person who was not involved in producing it. The reviewer confirms in writing, in the project's Notion file, that they have checked:

  1. Accuracy — are the claims supported by the sources cited?
  2. Attribution — are all sources credited clearly enough to be found independently?
  3. Fact vs. interpretation — is it always clear which is which (see 4.2)?
  4. AI-sourced claims — has every claim that originated from AI assistance been verified against a primary source (see 5.3)?
  5. Harm — does the piece, as written, risk harming participants, communities, or the public conversation in any way not already addressed in the scope?
  6. Community commitments — if Section 3.8 applies, has the plan for returning findings to the community been carried out?

Nothing goes live without the reviewer's sign-off documented in Notion.

In practice: A Publishing & Editorial Review policy is in development and will formalize this process in additional detail. Until then, the six-point checklist above is the standard, and any single point without a clear "yes" means the piece is not ready to publish.

4.6 Correcting Mistakes Publicly

If a factual error is identified in something DDC has already published, it is corrected publicly and promptly, with a visible note about what changed and when. Quietly editing a published piece without acknowledging the correction is not acceptable.

There are two categories of correction:

  1. Errata — minor factual errors that do not affect the piece's central findings or conclusions. These are corrected in place with a brief dated note: "Corrected on [date]: [what changed and why]."
  2. Significant corrections or retractions — errors that materially affect findings, conclusions, or community representation trigger the Red Plan (see Section 6), and may result in the piece being substantially revised, temporarily removed, or permanently retracted.

In practice: All corrections are documented in the project's Notion file, regardless of size, so there is a complete record of every change made to published work.

5. Use of AI in Research

5.1 AI Assists, It Does Not Author

AI tools may be used to help search, summarize, organize, or draft research material. The thinking, the analysis, the conclusions, and the final written work are the researcher's — not the AI's. A researcher cannot publish an AI-generated conclusion they have not independently verified and would not be willing to defend, in their own words, as their own.

In practice: If AI was used to draft a section, the researcher rewrites it in their own voice and must be able to explain, in conversation, why each substantive claim is accurate. If they cannot, the section is not ready to publish.

5.2 Disclosure

Consistent with Doodle's AI Ethics & Usage Policy, every research piece that AI helped draft or analyze — whether internal or public — includes a disclosure that AI assistance was used. This applies to long-form publications, short posts, internal reports, and any other format DDC research takes.

In practice: A disclosure note — "Drafted with AI writing assistance and reviewed by [name]" — appears on every research piece where AI was used in drafting or analysis, matching the standard used across DDC's other public-facing documents.

5.3 Verification Before Publication

Every factual claim, statistic, or citation that originated from AI assistance is verified against a primary source13 before publication. AI-generated research is a starting point to check, not a finding to trust.

In practice: The reviewer in Section 4.5 specifically checks AI-sourced claims against their original sources as part of the pre-publication review. Anything that cannot be independently verified is either sourced independently or removed.

5.4 No Sensitive Data Into AI Tools

Identifiable participant data, unpublished research findings, and other sensitive or confidential material are never entered into AI tools. If this happens by accident, the incident is reported to DDC leadership the same day so the exposure can be assessed and addressed — not after the project closes.

5.5 AI Tools Active During Live Research Sessions

If an AI tool — a notetaker, transcription service, or AI-facilitated interview format — is active during a session with a participant, the participant is told this explicitly before the session begins, as part of the informed consent process (see 3.2). This requirement is separate from the general AI disclosure in 5.2, and applies regardless of how brief or informal the session is.

In practice: Session consent scripts include a specific line about any AI tool active in the session, describing what the tool does and what happens to the output — including whether the output is retained, reviewed by humans, or fed into other systems.

6. The Red Plan — Responding When Research Goes Wrong

The Red Plan is DDC's structured response framework for situations in which research conduct, published findings, or data handling causes or risks causing harm. It defines three severity levels and the specific actions required at each.

The name reflects the intent: when something is seriously wrong, the normal pace of work stops. Decisions are made deliberately, with appropriate urgency, and with the affected community or participant — not DDC's publishing calendar — at the center of every choice.

6.1 What Triggers the Red Plan

The Red Plan is activated when any of the following occur:

  1. A factual error, sourcing failure, or misrepresentation is identified in published research.
  2. A participant makes a complaint about how they were treated or how their information was used.
  3. A community member or external party raises a credible concern that published research has caused harm.
  4. An internal team member identifies a failure to follow this policy that was not caught before publication.
  5. A potential or confirmed data breach involving identifiable participant information occurs.
  6. Allegations of fabrication, plagiarism, or other research misconduct are raised against a DDC researcher.
  7. DDC's research receives external legal challenge, regulatory inquiry, or significant public criticism.

When in doubt about whether something triggers the Red Plan, treat it as if it does. A false positive costs time. A false negative costs trust — and potentially causes serious harm.

6.2 Severity Levels at a Glance

Level Name Description First Action
1 Concern Error or procedural gap; no participant or community harm Internal review within 48 hours
2 Incident Participant harm, privacy breach, or significant misrepresentation Pause or remove; notify affected parties
3 Crisis Community harm, systemic misconduct, or external escalation Remove immediately; external review; public statement

6.3 Level 1 — Concern: Internal Review

What qualifies:

  • A factual error or incomplete attribution identified after publication.
  • A procedural gap — for example, a consent record is missing, but the consent process itself was followed.
  • A minor mischaracterization that does not cause measurable participant or community harm.
  • An AI verification gap discovered after the piece went live.

What happens:

  1. The issue is logged in Notion with the date it was identified and who identified it.
  2. The lead researcher and reviewer assess the issue together within 48 hours.
  3. If a correction to the published piece is needed, it is made and noted publicly per Section 4.6.
  4. The process failure that allowed the issue to reach publication is identified, documented, and addressed — whether by updating the scope template, the review checklist, or this policy.
  5. DDC leadership is notified and the outcome is documented in Notion.

6.4 Level 2 — Incident: Public Action and Notification

What qualifies:

  • A participant has experienced harm, distress, or a privacy violation as a result of how DDC handled their information.
  • Published findings significantly misrepresent a community or individual in a way that causes reputational, emotional, or material harm.
  • A credible complaint is received from a participant or community member about research conduct or published findings.
  • A confirmed or likely data breach involving identifiable participant information has occurred.

What happens:

  1. The published piece, if implicated, is removed from DDC's website immediately while the situation is assessed. A brief note is posted in its place: "This piece has been temporarily removed pending review."
  2. DDC leadership convenes within 24 hours.
  3. The affected participant or community is contacted directly within 48 hours to acknowledge the concern, describe what DDC is doing, and invite their input.
  4. A full internal review is conducted: what happened, how it happened, who was affected, and what the consequences were.
  5. A decision is reached within two weeks on whether the piece is republished with corrections, permanently retracted, or replaced.
  6. The outcome and the reasoning behind it are documented in Notion and, where relevant, communicated publicly.

6.5 Level 3 — Crisis: External Review and Public Statement

What qualifies:

  • Published research has caused or is credibly alleged to have caused significant harm to a community — for example, reinforcing harmful stereotypes, misrepresenting a community's experiences in a way that has reached a wide audience, or contributing to discrimination.
  • Allegations of fabrication, plagiarism, or systemic ethical violations by a DDC researcher.
  • External legal challenge, regulatory inquiry, or significant media attention related to DDC's research conduct.

What happens:

  1. The implicated research is removed from all DDC platforms immediately.
  2. A public statement is issued within 48 hours acknowledging that the situation exists, describing what DDC is doing about it, and committing to transparency about the outcome.
  3. DDC engages at least one qualified external reviewer15 with no financial or personal connection to DDC to independently assess the research and its conduct and to publish their findings. The external review is not managed or shaped by DDC beyond basic logistics.
  4. Leadership determines, with input from the external reviewer and where appropriate the affected community, whether the piece is permanently retracted, significantly revised, or addressed through another means.
  5. The full outcome — what went wrong, who was responsible, what changes DDC is making to prevent recurrence, and any community repair efforts — is documented publicly.
  6. Where a contractor is found responsible for misconduct, the engagement ends.

6.6 Research Misconduct Defined

The following are treated as research misconduct under this policy:

  1. Fabrication — inventing or altering data, findings, or sources.
  2. Misrepresentation — misstating a participant's words, their consent, or the conditions under which research was conducted.
  3. Plagiarism — presenting someone else's work or findings as DDC's own original research, without attribution.
  4. Unsupported conclusions — knowingly publishing a conclusion the evidence does not support.
  5. Privacy violations — mishandling identifiable participant data, or publishing information a participant did not consent to share.
  6. Coercive incentives — compensating or pressuring participants in a way that undermines genuine voluntary consent (see 3.5).
  7. Extractive research — publishing research that uses a community's experiences without following the return-of-findings commitment in Section 3.8.
  8. Concealment — attempting to correct, suppress, or minimize a research error without the disclosure required by Section 4.6 or the Red Plan process required by Section 6.

6.7 How to Raise a Concern

Anyone — a DDC team member, a contractor, a participant, or a member of the public — can raise a concern about DDC's research by contacting us at hi@sharpsticker.store. Concerns may be raised by name or anonymously. All concerns are logged in Notion with the date received, so there is a record that every concern was acknowledged and addressed.

Where a concern suggests a process failure that may affect research beyond a single project — for example, a structural gap in the consent process or the review checklist — DDC leadership escalates the response accordingly.

6.8 No Retaliation

No one who raises a concern about DDC's research in good faith will face any negative consequence for doing so. This applies to employees, contractors, participants, and members of the public equally. If a concern is investigated and found to be unfounded, that outcome is documented — but it does not affect the standing of the person who raised it.

7. Policy Administration

  1. Effective Date and Review — This policy takes effect on [EFFECTIVE DATE] and will be reviewed at least once a year, or sooner if DDC's research practices change significantly. The annual review checks whether actual practices still match what is written here, and updates anything that has drifted.
  2. Amendments — Changes to the REP are decided by DDC leadership. Material changes are communicated to everyone this policy applies to before they take effect, and recorded in the Changelog below.
  3. Questions — Questions about this policy can be directed to hi@sharpsticker.store.

Changelog

Version 1.0 — [EFFECTIVE DATE]

Initial public release of the Research Ethics Policy (REP). Establishes DDC's independent societal research mission across four areas: impact on marginalized communities, societal ethics and morals, psychological and sociological influences on society and government, and human interaction with art and design. Introduces core research principles including community-first research and researcher positionality; community-engaged research standards including informed consent, voluntary participation, data rights, and return of findings; research integrity and publication standards; AI use rules; and the Red Plan — a three-tier severity framework for responding when research goes wrong. Supersedes prior internal draft.

Footnotes

  1. Marginalized minority groups refers to communities that have been pushed to the edges of social, economic, or political life through systemic discrimination, exclusion, or historical injustice. This includes but is not limited to communities defined by race and ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity, disability, socioeconomic status, immigration status, and religion. DDC uses this term to describe the structural condition of exclusion — not simply numerical minority status. A group can be numerically small without being marginalized, and can be marginalized while representing a large portion of the population. ↩
  2. Sociological refers to the study of how society, social institutions, and social relationships operate — examining how group dynamics, cultural norms, power structures, and institutions shape human behavior at scale. This is related to, but distinct from, psychological, which focuses on the individual mind and its processes. Much of DDC's research sits at the intersection of both fields — asking how social forces shape individual experience, and how individual psychology shapes collective behavior. ↩
  3. Disconfirming evidence is evidence that challenges or contradicts a hypothesis, belief, or predetermined conclusion. Rigorous research actively seeks disconfirming evidence rather than only gathering support for the conclusion a researcher already suspects is correct. The failure to actively seek and honestly report disconfirming evidence is one of the most common ways research crosses from honest inquiry into advocacy dressed up as fact. ↩
  4. Extractive research refers to research that takes information, stories, or data from a community without meaningfully giving back. Examples include publishing findings about a marginalized community without sharing them with that community; building an institution's reputation on a community's experiences without the community's meaningful involvement or benefit; and failing to credit community members whose knowledge shaped the research. Extractive research is widely recognized in the ethics literature as a form of harm — particularly in relation to historically underserved communities — and is addressed directly in Section 3.8 of this policy. ↩ ↩
  5. Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) is a research framework that treats community members as active partners or co-investigators rather than passive subjects. Rather than studying a community from the outside, CBPR involves the community in shaping the research questions, choosing the methods, interpreting the findings, and determining how results are shared and used. Research conducted using CBPR principles tends to be more relevant to the communities it concerns, more trusted by those communities, and less likely to cause unintended harm. DDC draws on CBPR principles when conducting direct participant research with marginalized communities, adapting them to a non-academic, design-studio context. ↩
  6. Researcher positionality refers to the way a researcher's own social identity, background, cultural assumptions, and lived experience shape how they conduct and interpret research. All researchers have a positionality; the question is whether they acknowledge and account for it or pretend it doesn't exist. Reflexivity is the practice of actively examining one's own positionality throughout the research process — asking how personal assumptions may be influencing choices about what to study, who to believe, what feels significant, and how to frame findings. Both concepts are foundational in participatory and qualitative research ethics. ↩
  7. Co-design sessions (also called participatory design) are collaborative working sessions in which community members or research participants take an active role in shaping a design, methodology, or outcome — rather than being observed or consulted after decisions have already been made. In a research context, co-design might involve working with community members to determine which questions matter most, which methods feel respectful and culturally appropriate, or how findings should be presented to be most useful to the community. ↩
  8. Communities that have been historically harmed by outside researchers include, among others, Indigenous communities subjected to research that ignored their sovereignty and cultural protocols; communities of color subjected to unethical medical research without meaningful consent; LGBTQ+ communities pathologized by psychological research for decades; and poor communities studied as social problems rather than as people with agency and expertise. A researcher approaching any of these communities carries the weight of that history whether they intend to or not. Awareness of that history is a prerequisite for doing the work responsibly. ↩
  9. Informed consent is a participant's voluntary, knowing agreement to take part in research, given only after they have been clearly told what the research involves, how their data will be used, what rights they have, and what risks there are. Informed consent is a foundational principle of research ethics, codified in documents including the Belmont Report (1979) and the Declaration of Helsinki. It rests on the principle that no one should be enrolled in research without genuinely understanding and freely accepting the conditions of their participation. ↩
  10. Vulnerable participants is a term used in research ethics to describe individuals who may be at heightened risk of harm from participation, or who may face additional barriers to exercising free and fully informed consent — due to age, cognitive or communication differences, institutional relationships, social pressure, or prior experiences of trauma. The term does not imply that these individuals lack agency. It reflects the ethical obligation to design additional safeguards when standard consent procedures may be insufficient. ↩
  11. Anonymization is the process of removing or altering identifying information so that an individual cannot reasonably be identified from the remaining data. This is distinct from pseudonymization, in which identifying details are replaced with a code or alias — pseudonymized data can, in principle, still be traced back to an individual if the code key exists. DDC defaults to full anonymization for participant data wherever feasible, because pseudonymization carries residual re-identification risk, particularly for small or distinctive communities. ↩
  12. GDPR — the General Data Protection Regulation — is a European Union law, effective since 2018 and continued in UK law post-Brexit, that governs how personal data about EU and UK residents is collected, stored, used, and deleted. It gives individuals legally enforceable rights to access, correct, and delete their personal data. Organizations that process the personal data of EU or UK residents, regardless of where the organization is based, are subject to GDPR obligations. Because DDC occasionally works with participants from EU and UK countries, it observes GDPR-consistent standards for those individuals, and extends the same rights to all participants as a matter of policy, regardless of location. ↩
  13. A primary source is the original source of a fact, finding, or claim — for example, the original published study, a government dataset, the transcript of an interview, or a firsthand account. A secondary source is a work that discusses, interprets, or summarizes a primary source rather than being the source itself. DDC's standard is to verify claims against primary sources where they exist, and to clearly indicate when a claim is sourced from secondary reporting rather than from the original. ↩ ↩
  14. A conflict of interest in research is a situation in which a person's private interests — financial, personal, or professional — could influence, or reasonably appear to influence, how research is conducted, interpreted, or reported. The presence of a conflict of interest does not automatically mean research is compromised. Undisclosed conflicts of interest, however, undermine the integrity and public trust of the work. Transparent disclosure before work begins is the standard in research ethics. ↩
  15. A qualified external reviewer for the purposes of Level 3 of the Red Plan is an individual or organization with recognized expertise in research ethics, sociological or psychological research methodology, or community-engaged research — who has no financial or personal relationship with DDC and no stake in the outcome of the review. Their role is to provide an independent, credible assessment of whether DDC's research met reasonable ethical and methodological standards, and to publish their findings publicly. The absence of any connection to DDC is essential: a reviewer whose livelihood depends on DDC's goodwill cannot provide the independence the Level 3 process requires. ↩

A Letter to Our Research Team

To everyone doing research under the Doodle name —

The topics we study are not abstract. The communities whose experiences inform our work are real. The questions we ask about society, power, exclusion, and design carry weight for real people — people who in many cases have been studied, misrepresented, or ignored by researchers before us.

That is exactly why we do this work. And it is exactly why we hold ourselves to the standards in this document.

The REP is not a bureaucratic hurdle. It is our commitment — to the people who trust us with their experiences, to the communities whose stories deserve more than extraction, and to the public who reads what we publish. Every consent form, every scope document, every reviewer sign-off, and every step of the Red Plan exists because someone could be genuinely harmed if we cut corners. Doing this work well is worth doing carefully.

Ask questions when something feels uncertain. Raise concerns when something feels wrong. Push back when a deadline puts pressure on the integrity of the work. Never feel like you need to make a finding sound better than it is to please anyone — including me.

What we publish under this name should be something every one of us can stand behind completely.

Thank you for taking that seriously.

— Will

Owner & Founder, Doodle Design Co.


AI was used in the drafting of this document and was later, before publishing reviewed by a DDC staff member. If you have questions please reach out to support at: hi@sharpsticker.store.