Inclusive Inquiry with SG Enable: Strengthening Community Through Research

Building truly inclusive experiences starts with listening to users, to partners, and sometimes to unexpected opportunities. Our recent collaboration with SG Enable showed us why listening is so important.

At 55 Minutes, we believe that good design is not just about visuals or interfaces, it is about people. Over the past year, we have been deepening our focus on inclusive design and accessibility, exploring how we can better serve diverse needs and user groups. Through a series of three-month, pro-bono Inclusive Inquiry collaborations, we worked with organisations tackling accessibility challenges, learning together and sharing what we find with the broader community.

One of our collaboration projects was with SG Enable, the focal agency for disability and inclusion in Singapore that enables persons with disabilities to live, learn, work and play in an inclusive society.. Together, we explored their pilot social innovation digital platform, a space that aims to activate the community to co-create meaningful solutions that address challenges faced by persons with disabilities.

Listening to our client

This partnership began with a simple outreach. We had approached SG Enable to see if they could introduce partners for our Inclusive Inquiry programme, but as it turned out, they were also developing their own pilot social innovation digital platform  and had an area of need that we could help to explore. Their platform had already gone through several design iterations and rounds of user testing, and the team wanted to take the next step: building a more engaged and self-sustaining community around it.

The conversation quickly evolved into a shared opportunity. SG Enable wanted insights to guide their community and engagement strategy, not another design refresh. That shaped the project’s direction and our main focus: How might we help  strengthen community participation for the platform, within the platform’s existing design and structure?

Listening to users

55 Minutes’ mission is to ask the right questions. Empathy is a key motivator behind our work, so research is often the most important part of any project.

Recruitment was one of the biggest hurdles. The platform serves a diverse group of users: persons with disabilities, caregivers, social service professionals, problem owners, and volunteers. To gain a holistic picture of user needs and pain points, we needed to speak to people across the whole range of user groups. Recruiting enough interview participants was difficult and time-consuming but SG Enable played an important role here. While convincing stakeholders of the value of user conversations is not always straightforward, we were fortunate that SG Enable was already understanding of the research needs, helping us to reach out to potential participants in their own network and providing tokens of appreciation to interviewees for giving us their time and insights.

Since the main researcher was based overseas, all interview sessions needed to be held online. Conducting interviews remotely required intentional coordination with clear roles, disciplined note-taking, and strong communication within the team. The online format also offered several advantages, such as making participation more convenient for participants, giving us greater flexibility in scheduling, and improving note-taking efficiency.

Looking back, the effort we put into listening to our interviewees was the most demanding and also the most worthwhile part of the project. Oftentimes, research seems inconvenient or costly, but it is an important step in product development if we want to establish a solid foundation for future planning and strategy. We approached our research with an open mind, trying our best to discard any personal beliefs and assumptions that may affect how we absorb learnings from listening to people’s lived experiences. This meant approaching every conversation with humility, asking open-ended questions, and being comfortable with not knowing where the conversation might lead even if it sometimes felt slow and messy, or inconclusive. Speaking to people with experiences that differed so much from our own was eye-opening and this research was a good reminder to us that empathy requires time, patience, and genuine curiosity.

Insights and outcomes

At the end of the three months, we delivered a comprehensive report that shed light on how different user groups experienced the platform and what motivated or limited their participation. The findings led to recommendations on how to improve communication about the platform’s processes and identified some strategies for the platform to engage with potential partners.

Research like this cannot be done one-sidedly. It requires stakeholders who are aligned on the value of listening, who are willing to work with complexity without taking shortcuts. Our team was able to deliver meaningful insights because SG Enable was precisely such a partner. From the first introductory meeting, their team had an open and collaborative mindset. Every little idea and question from both sides were treated seriously and discussed with sincerity. This created the conditions for honest conversations with users and allowed us to go deeper in our inquiry.

The Contents page of the report that 55 Minutes prepared for SG Enable

These insights now serve as a foundation for SG Enable’s next steps with the platform, whether refining their outreach strategy, designing new engagement activities, or strengthening their relationships with partners and contributors.

Due to privacy concerns, the report may not be shared publicly.

Reflections and lessons learned

Doing work that creates an impact is not always straightforward. Looking back, several lessons stood out.

First, research is important. Thorough and honest research will provide clarity, direction, and confidence that strategies or recommendations are anchored in reality, potentially reducing the amount of resources needed for course corrections in the future.

Second, the breadth of the research matters. Speaking to a small slice of users would have been faster and easier, but could have led to narrow or distorted results. Patterns only become visible when we have enough diverse voices.

Third, stakeholders can make or break a project. Having a partner that was willing to stay open throughout the process was critical to our success. For teams attempting similar work, building stakeholder relations early can prevent friction later when aligning on the scope of research.

Fourth, be responsive to logistical challenges. Remote interviews and scheduling constraints can erode quality if not managed well. What helped us was being deliberate about roles, documentation, and communication rhythms. Such operational details directly impact research planning and execution.

Finally, put in the effort to listen deeply. This means showing up with humility to ask better questions, and resisting the urge to validate our own assumptions. When participants feel heard rather than assessed, the quality of insights improves significantly.

If there is one key takeaway, it is that listening is not a phase in the work, it is the work. The more seriously a team takes it, the more everyone benefits.

Looking ahead

This collaboration is only a starting point and one of many accessibility-related projects that 55 Minutes is working on. Building a more inclusive society requires a community that is willing to listen more deeply and design with, and not just for, others. We also recognise that meaningful impact happens through collaboration. If you are exploring how to make your products or services more inclusive, we would love to partner with you to learn together and to design something that’s accessible to all.