From the category archives:

Ethnography

51 card deck to inspire design from Ideo

June 21, 2010

Discovered this eBook on Ideo’s Method Cards at the Healthcare Innovation by Design Blog.
From the Ideo website:
IDEO Method Cards is a collection of 51 cards representing diverse ways that design teams can understand the people they are designing for. They are used to make a number of different methods accessible to all members of a [...]

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How twitter helps me dig into work

April 16, 2010

I was asked this question at the Anthrodesign group, in the context of a conversation around getting into the swing of a project and developing some working momentum . I shared there, how I often find myself turning to my blog and twitter communities for helping me with my thinking on qualitative and ethnographic [...]

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Reading Ahead … ethnography on evolution of books and reading

September 6, 2009

Is a good series from Portigal Consulting on an exploratory study using an ethnographic approach to explore the evolution of books and reading habits, and is intended to inspire conversations and innovations around the future of reading, an issue that’s quite a meme these days in the digital space! The series takes us on a [...]

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Mobile Innovations

July 23, 2009

For a few days over the next two weeks, I’m going to be a “scribe” where I will visit with people who’s lives are being transformed through mobile innovations. This will be in rural Maharashtra and Kolhapur, and the two projects we are covering in India are Nokia Life Tools and Nokia Tej.  This is [...]

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links for 2009-02-12

February 13, 2009

Anthropology and Activism in Pakistan with lullabies – A great example of Anthropology being used in Activism:”A few days ago, Pakistani anthropologist Samar Minallah lauched a “video song”, a tribute to little girls in all the regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan where schools are being destroyed, depriving girls of their right to education, The [...]

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Ethnographers or Bricoleurs?

November 15, 2008

Dr. Aviva Rosenstein – “Fake Ethnography vs Real Ethnography” at URF08 from bolt peters on Vimeo.
In a review of the User Research Friday Talks, Celeste Roschuni provides a recap of Dr. Rosenstein’s talk:
….. and finished with the idea that it’s more important to be doing good research than to be doing “real ethnography.” Aviva [...]

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Mashup for Ethnography

November 12, 2008

Here’s a very neat mashup of GoogleEarth and Twitter for ethnography (it’s in French). @thiteu sent me the link on Twitter.

This work is a simulation of a 3 dimensional Geography using GOOGLE EARTH and of a social signal using TWITTER in ethnography nowadays.
Cool? Yeah. Imagine Second Life sort of re-enactments of the whole world [...]

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Seeing the world through people’s eyes

November 10, 2008

Gabriel Biller & Kristy Scovel from IIT Institute of Design, Chicago have a neat video called Getting People to Talk: An Ethnography & Interviewing Primer. It’s long – about 30 minutes but great for anyone who wants a good primer on conducting ethnographic research and interviewing.
Getting People to Talk: An Ethnography & Interviewing Primer from [...]

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YouTube, Qualitative Research & Ethnography

November 3, 2008

Interesting intersections between YouTube, qual research and ethnography. Visual observations and reporting have always been very powerful in research.  Some recent explorations and projects around this:
YouTube as a Qualitative Research Asset: Reviewing User Generated Videos as Learning Resources
by: Ronald J. Chenail, Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida [Source: The Weekly Qualitative Report Volume 1 Number [...]

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Blogs for Market Research

May 13, 2008

We’re now working with another tech company on a research project which will include blogging and the use of twitter for both participants and researchers who are located all over the world.  Some issues we’re grappling with:

how much coaching and of what kind is required for those participants who are not actively using blogs [...]

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Virtual Ethnography Thoughts

May 13, 2008

Thought I’d share something we worked on last year – almost at the same time Twitter came into its own. and before we thought up Twitter for Ethnography.
We spent some time developing an SMS-Blog research prototype with Srinivas Mogalapalli at Netcore (Rajesh Jain’s company), built upon the MyToday SMS platform.
This was a module in a [...]

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Learning to be … through Learning Journeys

February 1, 2008

Mahatma Gandhi once said: “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.”
My recent experience with the Learning Journey we organised for Clients actually reinforced to me that given the right balance of content with experiential immersions and a focus on ‘how’ learning would take place, learning-to-be can begin even with just [...]

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Twitter for Ethnography

February 1, 2008

There’s a discussion on at the anthrodesign group around how best to approach a diary project. An excerpt from the initial query:
“We’ll be fielding a diary study trying to understand people’s initial experiences with a new mobile phone, particularly understanding the set up experience and the first few days of use. We are interested [...]

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My week on a Learning Journey

January 14, 2008

I am just back from a week-long Learning Journey my colleague Shubhangi and I organised for a group of 10 very senior health-care professionals from the US who are on a Futures Task Force … it was intensive, immersive and really very rewarding. It’s been a Learning Journey for all of us – we formed [...]

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