Design Research and Strategy
My column in University Affairs has finally been published. In it, I argue that social scientists have both practical and moral reasons to seek out work in the business world:
Social scientists can improve business outcomes by doing what they’ve been trained to do: examine the social practices around the product or service. We are studying [...]
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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 [...]
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The Essence of Interaction Design Research: A Call for Consistency
This post is reproduced from the original Interactions magazine article
It started with an innocent query to the IxDA listserv. Someone was sure they had read an article in Interactions magazine once but could not find it again: Wasn’t there something written sometime by someone about something [...]
Categories: Blog · Research Methods · culture · design · home · interaction design · management · organizations · personas · qualitative research · quantitative research · sample size
Gladwell sparked quite the social media flare when he claimed recently that social media pundits greatly overestimate social media’s ability to effect social change. He compared the famous civil-rights era lunch-counter sit-ins to the revolutionary activity in contemporary Iran and found good, old-fashioned face-to-face relationships were a more effective mobilization tool than the new-fangled Twitter [...]
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Remember “synergy?” AOL Time Warner was designed to save money and make money. But it was not designed to be a true organization. 10 years ago, Time Warner aimed to blast into the 21st century by “synergizing” with America Online.
The New York Times has a fabulous retrospective of the merger.
In their teaser video, Robert Puttnam, former [...]
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