Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
INCITE, an incubator affiliated with the University of Surrey (UK), supports critical inquiry into technology and ethnography and provides a creative interdisciplinary space for research projects which explore the socio-cultural dimensions of technology use and design.
This very interesting Global Watch* mission report (which I just finished reading) summarises the results of an official UK field trip to the US to investigate the impact of people-centred research in the design process. The authors were interested in…
Veteran designer Jane Fulton Suri who is the author of the new book Thoughtless Acts, discerns unmet consumer needs via keen observations of ordinary people doing ordinary things.Some industrial designers sketch, some study new material technology, some collect inspiration from…
In a bid to eventually sell more chips, Intel has set up four new offices in Bangalore, Cairo, Sao Paulo and Shanghai that are staffed with anthropologists and engineers to help design computers with features for emerging markets. The four…
New Experience is a London-based user experience consultancy with associates in USA, Asia and Continental Europe. The company uses ethnographic research, usability testing and information design to help its clients develop innovative product and service experiences that are grounded in…
US teenagers prefer instant messaging rather than e-mail to stay in touch with each other, research shows. A Pew Internet and American Life Project study found online teens are increasingly tech-savvy. Nearly nine out of 10 teenagers say they use…
Blogger Grant McCracken has posted a nice tale about doing ethnography at McDonald’s to figure out why people order smaller drink sizes in the drive-thru than inside. And in the process, provides a nice concise explanation of a research approach.…
thoughtless acts? is a book by Jane Fulton Suri and IDEO that invites you to notice the subtle and amusing ways that people react to the world around them. These “thoughtless acts” reveal how people how people behave in a…
Context-based Research Group was established in 1999, the goal was simple – to help marketers and product designers do better work through the power of ethnography. Margaret’s Walking Stick is Context’s perpetual anthropology / ethnography education project. Each month contains…
You’ve seen “The Bachelor” and “The Apprentice” … now, “The Consumer.” Or maybe “The Urban Ethnographer.” Chances are these private episodes won’t be screened for you; Carl Marziali reports. Listen to this feature
A long feature on how teens use digital devices to stay connected with each other. Read full story
This article describes critical design ethnography, an ethnographic process involving participatory design work aimed at transforming a local context while producing an instructional design that can be used in multiple contexts. Download article (pdf, 1 mb)
A recent survey conducted by Microsoft corp finds that workers average only three productive days per week and lays the blame on among other things, unproductive staff meetings. Employees spend an average of 5.6 hours in meetings each week…
[…] There is a certain correspondence between Microsoft’s research agenda and the work of the old-time anthropologists, many of whom were funded by colonial governments that needed to understand their native subjects in order to rule them more effectively. The…
At Intel, which wasn’t used to having a direct relationship with its end users, the challenges for an anthropologist were not simple. Read full story
“So how do you feel about e-mail?” asks Simon Roberts, a social anthropologist. “How has it changed your workload?” This is not what social anthropologists are usually expected to ask: they observe courtship rituals, try to interpret ancient chants,…
Microsoft Corp.’s research unit is turning to social scientists in a new effort to understand the long-term possibilities for computer technology in developing countries. A Microsoft Research lab, to be inaugurated tomorrow in Bangalore, India, plans to employ anthropologists, ethnographers…
NPR’s Eric Weiner reports on the emerging field of corporate anthropology, where researchers dissect consumer appetites and help engineers build user-friendly products. Listen
Genevieve Bell, a cultural anthropologist at Intel, has fundamentally changed the way we think about design, technology and culture. Through research and observation, Bell brought to our awareness how concepts of ‘home’, ‘family’ and ‘individual’ vary from one culture to…
For a summer, Dev Patnaik and his team of researchers hung out with teens preparing to go away to college. Trained in anthropology and sociology, they observed while the teens and their parents shopped for the essentials of college…