distributed work

Intelligences

Defining Hybrid User Research: Practices for Distributed and Remote-First Environments

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Defining Hybrid User Research: Practices for Distributed and Remote-First Environments; Spotify, EPIC2022 Platinum Sponsor Panel
An EPIC2022 Sponsored Panel by Spotify Moderators: AUDREY TSE (Spotify), KARELL MCDONALD (Spotify) Panelists: KARIM HAMDOUN (Spotify), DOMINIKA MAZUR (Spotify), ALEXANDRA MCCARTER (Spotify), SAM WAY (Spotify) Over the past 2.5 years, researchers have had to become more resilient and adaptable in how they conduct research. Now that things are bouncing back, we’re at a crossroads in deciding what the future of user research looks like. In this panel, leading members of Spotify’s product insights community will discuss different perspectives on how researchers have adapted from face-to-face research to remote settings, and the adaptations we intend to keep in a hybrid practice. We will contemplate how this hybrid practice can morph depending on various topics, such as community making and the audio space. We’ll include some interactive components to encourage dialogue, and it will be a discussion you don’t want to miss! Moderators Audrey Tse is a User Researcher at Spotify working on creating a better Messaging...

Intelligences

Scaling Out (Not Only Up): Distributed Collaboration Models to Get Work Done

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ALICIA DORNADIC MindSpark NIKKI LAVOIE MindSpark SHEILA SUAREZ DE FLORES 10 10 10, Eco.tter ELVIN TUYGAN MindSpark In this catalyst, we the authors describe the benefits of ‘scaling out’: reaching out beyond one's organization to bring in external partners to accomplish UX research. Organizations scale out their research efforts in order to cover more ground, draw from more specialties, or conduct more research more quickly than they would be able to alone. As opposed to growing an in-house team to meeting research needs (‘scaling up’), scaling out can be a more inclusive approach to generating user insights, where the voices of diverse research partners throughout the world are brought together to produce powerful UX research outcomes. A case study example of work with suppliers and clients illustrates scaling out. Collective intelligence pushes scaling out even further, as it counts research participants, users and potential users as part of the network of partners who get work done. Keywords: distributed collaboration,...

Intelligences

Accelerating Collaboration with Social Tools

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ALEXANDRA MACK and DINA MEHTA As more and more corporate ethnographic work is crossing international borders, we are increasingly collaborating with teams that are spread across the globe. As a result, we need tools that enable us to work across boundaries. Since early 2004, the authors have been collaborating on a research project developed by an American company seeking to develop solutions specific to the Indian market. One of us, an Indian sociologist, led a team of ethnographers in India, while the other, an American anthropologist, managed research and analysis for concept development in the US. While all of the US-based team members spent time in the field in India during the project, integrating the teams into the same “brainspace” was a challenge. This paper describes how we used social tools to enable each set of team members to understand the work being done on the other side of the world....