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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 [...]

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Categories: Blog · Research Methods · anthropology · design · ethnography · goffman · product design · qualitative research · sociology · technology design · user experience

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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Categories: Blog · anthropology · culture · facebook · home · organizations · qualitative research · sample size · social capital · social media · sociology

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 [...]

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Categories: Blog · anthropology · brand · culture · home · market research · sociology · time

The real meaning of “back to school”

by Sam Ladner on August 24, 2010 · 2 comments

in Blog

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 [...]

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Categories: Blog

Yesterday, I attended Roger Martin’s presentation of his new book, The Design of Business, hosted at the Ontario College of Art and Design. Roger gave a brief overview of his book and then engaged in a dialogue with the host, Michael Dila, and members of the audience.
Roger explained that some organizations are better able to [...]

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