Posts tagged as:

innovation

My article on understanding organizational culture is now up on the interaction design site, Johnny Holland. The post provides an overview of key factors in organizational culture and how these factors affect an organization’s culture. It’s specifically intended to help designers understand their clients’ business culture and to avoid the all-too-common trap of “missing the [...]

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Categories: anthropology · culture · facebook · interaction design · product design · qualitative research · sociology · technology design

The technology consulting firm Gartner is predicting that social scientists will be very much in demand by businesses. Eweek summarizes Gartner’s outline of four types of roles for social scientists:
Web User Experience roles that include UI designers, virtual-assistant designers and interaction directors.
Behavior Analysis roles that include Web psychologists, community designers, and Web/social network miners.
Information Specialist [...]

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Categories: Popular · anthropology · design · sociology · technology design · user experience

New research finds that there are seven key factors that promote social capital. In his book, Unanticipated Gains, Mario Luis Small did an ethnography of New York daycare centres. What he finds may surprise you: daycare centres are great “brokers” for social capital. I describe his findings on the Social Capital Value Add blog:
Small argues [...]

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Categories: bourdieu · ethnography · qualitative research · social capital · social networks · sociology

I examine the tools and processes I use to do my own work. Like many agency workers, I often bill by the hour. Check out my research on this phenomenon:
This paper is about time regimes that are typical in interactive agencies, as well as law firms, some construction companies and some management consultancies: the so-called [...]

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Categories: Blog · Popular

Design thinking’s big problem

by Sam Ladner on March 4, 2009 · 56 comments

in Blog, Popular

So-called “design thinking” is the new It-Girl of management theory. It purports to provide new ways for managers and companies to provide innovative, creative solutions to old problems. But design thinking alone will not solve these problems because a lack of creativity was never the issue.
The real issue is one of power.
Design is attractive to [...]

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Categories: Blog · Popular

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