The promise of generative AI technologies is seductive to product leaders: frictionless research in which...
Tag: data science
Friction by Machine: How to Slow Down Reasoning with Computational Methods
This paper provides a theoretical alternative to the prevailing perception of machine learning as synonymous with...
Integrating Data & Social Science
https://player.vimeo.com/video/897269896?badge=0&autopause=0&player_id=0&app_id=58479 In Stripe Partners’ report The New Research Playbook, Stripe Partners outlined one important shift that practitioners need to embrace: the skillset shift from narrow user research to integrated data....
DIYing along with DIYers: Juggling with Scales During a Home-Improvement Research
As a team of researchers was asked by a French home-improvement retailer to redefine their strategy, they designed and carried out an ethnographic and quantitative research to identify new business opportunities. But no sooner had they set foot in field, they were struck not only by the richness...
Tutorial: Doing Ethnography of Data Science & Algorithmic Systems
Description Approx 1 hr 43 min. This video presents the lecture portion of a half-day tutorial. Case studies and a...
How Is Evidence Created, Used & Abused? EPIC2018 Opening Remarks
We chose Evidence as the EPIC2018 theme in part to explore this question of why some things constitute evidence and not others. There are lots of factors we could point to, but since I’m standing next to a data scientist the first one I’ll talk about is digitization. Digitization changes how...
Just Add Water: Lessons Learned from Mixing Data Science and Design Research Methods to Improve Customer Service
Case Study—This case study provides an inside look at what occurs when methods from the data science and ethnographic fields are mixed to solve perennial customer service problems within the call center and cruise industries. The paper details this particular blend of ethnographic practitioners...
Designing for Interactions with Automated Vehicles: Ethnography at the Boundary of Quantitative-Data-Driven Disciplines
Case Study—This case study presents ethnographic work in the midst of two fields of technological innovation: automated vehicles (AV) and virtual reality (VR). It showcases the work of three MSc. Techno-Anthropology students and their collaboration with the EU H2020 project ‘interACT’, sharing the...
Human-Centered Data Science: A New Paradigm for Industrial IoT
Few professions appear more at odds, at least on the surface, than ethnography and data science. The first deals in qualitative “truths,” gleaned by human researchers, based on careful, deep observation of only a small number of human subjects, typically. The latter deals in quantitative “truths,”...
Human Sensemaking in the Smart City: A Research Approach Merging Big and Thick Data
This paper aims to contribute to the debate on the integration of ethnography and data science by providing a concrete research tool to deploy this integration. We start from our own experiences with user research in a data-rich environment, the smart city, and work towards a research tool that...