Responsible research and innovation in practice: Driving both the ‘How’ and the ‘What’ to research

•Case study on how research development can be ethically driven.•Types of interactions between researchers and responsible research and innovation.•Experiences and challenges elaborated within the main stages of research development. There have been ongoing discussions in research communities, including the field of trustworthy autonomous systems (TAS), on how researchers may meaningfully engage with responsible research and innovation (RRI). By critically reflecting on the RRI aspects of an ongoing research project focusing on the efficient capture of richer quantitative human response data (e.g., from consumer surveys), this paper offers a case study on how research development can be ethically driven. The role of RRI in the project is unpicked against the broader considerations of its possible interactions with researchers in a typology we developed: as a research safeguard, research subject, and research driver. Going beyond the more common practice of using RRI simply to safeguard how research should be conducted, it is demonstrated that it can also serve as a positive driving force to explore what should be researched. Experiences and challenges are elaborated within the main stages of research development, potentially applicable to a wider range of future projects in the field.