Design Research and Strategy
I recently gave a guest lecture to the Master’s of Design students at OCADU on how to research culture. Don’t worry if you missed it, because you can now listen to the same lecture and get the presentation!
Below is the audio and presentation from that lecture. Are you interested in more? Consider Culture Coaching, a new [...]
Categories: Blog · anthropology · culture · design · home · methods · qualitative research · sociology
Canadians love spring. If you’re not Canadian, I bet you’re thinking, “Of course they do; everyone does.” Ah but you do not “verstehen” Canada if you say such things. Indeed, I didn’t even “verstehen” Canada growing up on the West Coast — we didn’t even have snow!
Spring is approaching in Canada, and we feel it. [...]
Categories: Blog · anthropology · class · discourse analysis · goffman · social networks · technology design · web analytics
Social media today can take some wisdom from past research into social networks. Mark Granovetter’s famous sociological study of how people hear about job opportunities found that “weak ties” to friends and acquaintances are actually more beneficial than “strong ties” to family and close friends. Social media marketers need to consider who has weak ties [...]
Categories: Blog · Popular · anthropology · culture · facebook · home · management · organizations · personas · social media · social networks
I am a new home owner. Like many new home owners, I am both fascinated and repelled by the most terrifying show on television: Holmes on Homes. This show demonstrates a key aspect to understanding social life: normativity or what “should be.”
For those unfamiliar with the show, allow me to summarize the narrative arc of [...]
Categories: Blog · anthropology · culture · design · home · market research · product design · sociology
I am currently writing a grant proposal for a research project on mobile phones. This is the (very) short version:
All too often, technology designers create systems that unwittingly expose social actors to socially awkward situations. Companies like Facebook struggle to satisfy their users’ needs to present different selves in different social contexts. The dreaded “My [...]
Categories: Blog · Research Methods · anthropology · design · ethnography · goffman · product design · qualitative research · sociology · technology design · user experience