Jennifer Collier Jennings

Perspectives

Move Fast, Break Shit, Burn Out: The Catalyst’s Guide to Working Well

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a book review by TABITHA STEAGER, Workday Move Fast, Break Shit, Burn Out: The Catalyst’s Guide to Working Well Tracey Lovejoy and Shannon Lucas 2020, 305 pp, Lioncrest As I write this, we’re just a few months into 2021, and, well, the world hasn’t magically changed. When the clocks ticked over on December 31, it felt as if there was a collective, cautious sigh of relief while we continued to hold space for the grief and turmoil so many of us have experienced in the last year. Instead, we’re still in a sort of stasis globally, waiting for vaccine numbers to reach critical mass and learning how to combat new virus variants, so you’d be excused in feeling like this stasis is the new normal. Yet the days are getting longer and on my walks I see the snowdrops pushing their way up through the ground. It feels a little corny to write this, but spring is coming. It has been a long, upending year that’s left me on the edge of burnout (fully over the edge of burnout some days if I’m completely honest) and even more...

Perspectives

Evaluating Food Delivery in a Pandemic: Usability & Ethnographic Principles to Guide Consumers

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By CHARU AHUJA, Consumer Reports For almost 85 years, Consumer Reports has been detecting and anticipating shifts in consumer need for products and services so that we can guide consumer choice with rigorous research and testing. When the COVID-19 pandemic started to peak in March 2020 in the U.S., our ability to access the 63 product testing labs at our site changed. These labs house specialized equipment, such as a pressurized water dunk tank that is used to simulate conditions that electronics like phones and watches must be able to withstand if their manufacturers claim they are waterproof. And CR’s anechoic chamber removes all reflective sound signals, allowing a clean read on noise levels emitted by products. Such specialized equipment allows CR’s product testing experts to conduct repeatable and accurate testing across a large number of competing models in any given product category. Like most other organizations, we had to quickly pivot. To the extent possible, our product testers set up makeshift labs in their homes,...

Courses

Using Theory in Research: Applying Social and Cultural Frameworks

Learn how to use core models of society and culture to create better research, deeper insights, and more powerful value propositions for businesses, organizations, and communities. Instructor: KATE SIECK, PhD Enrollment: 20 Schedule: JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022 DATES WILL BE ANNOUNCED SOON! Course consists of 6 live online sessions + self-paced lectures, readings, and exercises. For details…

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Talks

Let’s Get Real about Burnout

an EPIC Talk presented by , Catalyst Constellations & EPIC co-founder Overview Burnout is at an all-time high and mental health at an all-time low. From vague head fogs to serious illness, we feel it in ourselves and our families, friends, teams, and research participants. What’s going on, and what in the world are we…

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Perspectives

加速用户研究：在Spotify我们如何从速度出发管理用研洞察

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What's slowing down user research? 4 speech bubbles with text: I have this amazing idea! Can we go validate it? / How's the user experience of this screen? / We are shipping next week but need to get this in from of users first! / Let's all work in lockstep like the good partners we are!
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN ENGLISH: Accelerating User Research: How We Structure Insights for Speed At Spotify 作者：SARA BELT, Spotify 不同于以往考虑我们如何能加快用户研究的速度，现在的问题变成我们该如何更好地将用户研究整合到产品开发流程中，以及加快组织学习和迭代的速度。 一直以来，由于人们认为用户研究的有效性较低，用户研究所得的洞察都在产品开发中被边缘化。我在职业生涯的第一阶段致力于提倡组织为什么该积极地听取用户的意见和想法，为什么每一个人应该相信定性见解可用于指导他们的决策，以及为什么用户研究是需要专业技能的实践领域。 随着用户研究逐渐证明贡献价值的能力，对于其效度的质疑和争论也在日趋减少。从数据、证据和同理心的角度来考虑产品的设计已经成为一种既定的方式。 在像在Spotify这样的公司中，用户研究的需求在快速增长，我们不得不开始考虑如何将用户研究的实践规模化。新的、更实质性的问题开始出现，要求我们以更快速度来创造价值的能力能够与快速将产品推向市场的财务和竞争优势相匹配。用户研究，或者是更广义上的洞察，一直因为产出速度慢而备受诟病...

Talks

Doing Ethnography in Civic Spaces

event title and panelists. full details on https://www.epicpeople.org/doing-ethnography-in-civic-spaces/

An EPIC Talk moderated by , Principal Design Researcher, Code for America Panelists: , Tech Talent Project & EPIC Board , Director of Research and Future Planning, Mayor’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer , UX Researcher, Central Integrity, Facebook , Service Design Lead & Customer Experience Strategist, NASA Overview Ethnography has always illuminated the…

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Perspectives

The Power of Not Thinking

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book cover, "The Power of Not Thinking"
a book review by GERALD LOMBARDI The Power of Not Thinking: How Our Bodies Learn and Why We Should Trust Them Simon Roberts 2020, 336 pp, Blink Publishing/Bonnier In The Power of Not Thinking: How Our Bodies Learn and Why We Should Trust Them, Simon Roberts aims to resuscitate the human body from the sepulchre of Western thought, where Descartes and his successors presumably buried it, and to correct popular misconceptions about how we generate knowledge. In the author's words: "Our intelligence does not just arise from our brains... nor can it be programmed as a set of rules or propositions that enables us to think in particular ways or perform particular actions. Instead, our understanding of the world arises from our bodies’ interactions with and perceptions of the world – and it is through these interactions that our bodies acquire knowledge." (p. 6) This proposition will be taken for granted by some readers of this review, and by anyone who follows its intellectual touchpoints: embodied cognition, situated learning,...

Talks

From Users to User Ecosystems

EPIC Talk: From Users to User Ecosystems, april 14, 2021

An EPIC Talk with (Youngblood Group), (American Board of Internal Medicine) & (Amazon Lab126) Overview User research and human-centered design help us solve real challenges and create better experiences. But there’s a problem: when we explore user experiences, we often frame these as individual, personal engagements with products and services. This can cause us to…

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Intelligences

Debugging Distributed Teamwork: New Research

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LEISA REICHELT, Chair Atlassian GILLIAN BOWAN Atlassian OWEN HODDA ANZ CHRIS MARMO PaperGiant JARROD PAYNE Atlassian An EPIC2020 Sponsored Panel presented by Atlassian The Atlassian Research & Insights team commissioned a research study that involved thousands of workers across the globe to see how COVID-19 and the sudden shift to working from home has affected them. Atlassian looked inward, too, to find out how Atlassians were impacted by the sudden, lasting change to work remotely. In this panel, moderated by Head of Research & Insights, Leisa Reichelt, the people behind this work will discuss the unanticipated impacts of the pandemic that our research uncovered and how we might all respond going forward. Panelists Leisa Reichelt leads the research and insights team at Atlassian, where they are interested in unleashing the potential of every team. Prior to Atlassian Leisa spent some time working with Government Digital Services, both in Australia and in the UK. In both cases, building research...

Intelligences

Human Action and the Dynamic Environment

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Human Action and the Dynamic Environment
ELIZABETH CHURCHILL, Chair Google CHRIS CSIKSZENTMIHALYI Cornell University GAVIN MCCORMICK WattTime PAMELA MCELWEEN Rutgers University LIANNE YU Studio Resilience An EPIC2020 Sponsored Panel presented by Google What does human scale mean through the lens of the environment? Alternatively, what does the scale of the Earth’s environment mean to human activity and life? We may start by thinking of the enormity of the problem to just describe these two perspectives. But, by stepping back and reframing our questions in terms of the tools we use—design, ethnography, AI, art—we gain a powerful and novel perspective. Panelists discuss their work in terms of the world’s biggest threat, climate change. Approaching this topic from each one’s unique worldview and the tools of their practice, they follow out the scales of local to global and how small and seemingly one-off events can grow to a world scale. How do we design, provoke, educate—and ultimately change the world—by employing disparate data...

Intelligences

Tutorial: Using a Mobile Research Platform for Multi-dimensional Ethnography

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JULIA KATHERINE HAINES Google BOB EVANS Google Overview The TRACES methodology focuses on foundational research at multiple levels of granularity and across multiple dimensions, digital and embodied. It is an approach to gathering more meaningful data around people’s daily lives, as they move within and between different devices, services, environments and product ecosystems. In this tutorial, participants will learn about TRACES and how to implement it using the Paco mobile and desktop behavioral research platform. Paco is an open source tool used around the world in both industry and academia. It can capture both emic and etic perspectives using sensors and logs, surveys, experience sampling, triggers, and prompts. Background on TRACES and Paco: Toward Multi-dimensional Ethnography, Julia Haines Paco: Applying Computational Methods to Scale Qualitative Methods, Bob Evans This tutorial was presented in full at EPIC202020. The video includes instructor presentations; discussions and breakout sessions...

Intelligences

Tutorial: Introduction to Survey Design

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JENNIFER HUNSECKER Nielsen LAUREN WALTON Nielsen Overview Ethnographers tend to be uneasy about survey research. Some of us shun it because it seems “reductive” of human experience; others are intimidated by complex methods and analytics that weren’t part of our research training. But surveys are everywhere—some are rigorous and insightful, many are lousy. Whether we’re conducting surveys, collaborating with colleagues who do, or interpreting survey-based studies, an understanding of survey research fundamentals is essential. Tutorial offers survey basics from an ethnographer and survey methodologist who collaborate at the world’s leading provider of media and marketing information. Their crash course on survey fundamentals includes: when to use surveys and why basics of survey design writing effective survey questions evaluating survey quality the total survey error framework how ethnographers and survey researchers can add value to each others’ work This tutorial is designed for...

Intelligences

Tutorial: Digital Ethnography in Domestic Spaces

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JENNY KENNEDY RMIT University ROWAN WILKEN RMIT University Overview This tutorial explores research in people’s homes through digital methods. The instructors focus on how to utilize participant’s existing digital skills and materials to undertake ethnographic research on and in their home environment, and develop a greater awareness of how geographical and socio-economic circumstances impact the research process. Participants collaborate to discuss how understanding of domestic contexts might frame our research design and specific methods, and consider ways for enhancing the collaborative and participatory process of data collection in the domestic space. This tutorial was presented in full at EPIC202020. The video includes instructor presentations; discussions and breakout sessions are excluded for the privacy of the participants. Instructors BROWSE ALL TUTORIALS...