by Sam Ladner on October 6, 2010 · 1 comment
in Blog, anthropology, culture, design, home, interaction design, sociology, technology design, time, time use, user experience
Consumers are “time starved,” as many designers and marketers may know, but there is more to the story than simply not having enough time. The very concept of “down time” carries an important lesson about technology design.
In this post, I analyze the idea of “down time” and the activity of “cottaging” as a Canadian (and [...]
Tagged as:
advertising,
Blog,
culture,
design,
home,
linkedin,
marketing,
technology
Categories: Blog · anthropology · culture · design · home · interaction design · sociology · technology design · time · time use · user experience
Autumn Rituals: Buying Jeans
Ritual plays an important role in our lives. Emile Durkheim noted in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life that ritual bookends our experience of time:
The division into days, weeks, months, years, etc., correspond to the periodical recurrence of rites, feasts, and public ceremonies.
Time passes, in part, because we create rituals to signal [...]
Tagged as:
anthropology,
Blog,
culture,
home,
linkedin,
retail,
sociology
Categories: Blog · anthropology · brand · culture · home · market research · sociology · time
These late days of August have an unmistakable whiff of Autumn. Like many other times of year, Autumn has a distinct social significance: back to school. But like many other social phenomena, “back to school” is not what it appears to be.
On the surface we see it as a time for children to re-focus, get [...]
Tagged as:
advertising,
Blog,
culture,
linkedin,
school,
society,
sociology,
time
Categories: Blog
by Sam Ladner on April 27, 2010 · 4 comments
in Blog, bourdieu, design, facebook, goffman, home, interaction design, market research, social capital, social media, social networks, sociology, technology design, user experience
I was recently invited to speak at Ottawa’s Social Media Breakfast. The organizers, Simon Chen, Rob Lane and Ryan Anderson, asked me specifically to bring a sociologist’s understanding to social media. Below is my presentation. For the full version, with the notes, visit the full slideshare version.
My essential argument for the presentation was that we [...]
Tagged as:
bourdieu,
facebook,
goffman,
linkedin,
social capital,
social media,
social networks
Categories: Blog · bourdieu · design · facebook · goffman · home · interaction design · market research · social capital · social media · social networks · sociology · technology design · user experience