This article shares an innovative, community-centered method for research, sensemaking, and innovation in social...
Tag: participatory research
Hearing Through Their Ears: Developing Inclusive Research Methods to Co-Create with Blind Participants
This paper recounts research into the orientation and mobility experiences of people who are blind or visually impaired, and describes the novel sonic research method I developed for this purpose. “Participant Phonography,” as I call the method, aims to empower research participants with low or no...
The Transformative Potential of Participatory Research in International Development Programming
In 2022, UNICEF launched the Adolescent Girls Programme Strategy to enhance programming for adolescent girls,...
Scaling Out (Not Only Up): Distributed Collaboration Models to Get Work Done
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...
Tutorial: Participatory Visual Research—Getting the Most from Collaborative Methods
Overview Participatory visual research methods like Photovoice open up opportunities for collaborative sense-making and advocacy. In these methodologies, data and knowledge are produced not only as an end...
Empowering Communities: Future-Making through Citizen Ethnography
This paper proposes a way to harness the power and benefits of community-led future change through the process of “citizen ethnography”. Just as “citizen science” has become a potent method for non-scientists to collect and contribute to scientific knowledge and outcomes, citizen ethnography is...
The Para-Ethnographic Trajectories Of Professional Ethnography
Professional anthropologists frequently occupy unique roles, simultaneously inside and outside the organizations we work for or work with. Most of us are already adept at negotiating these roles, but don’t necessarily highlight this skill as something of great value, either to professional...
Reconnecting with the Public: Participatory Research and Co-creations within and outside a Public Institution
Despite constraints on face-to-face meetings and social distancing policies under COVID-19, with the help of online tools, Brandnographer successfully conducted a series of online activities to facilitate...
“Understanding the World through Engagement”: Jeanette Blomberg, A Profile
EPIC Profiles Series How can risk-taking propel an ethnographic career? Just ask Jeanette Blomberg, who is no stranger to professional risk-taking. Her career journey, including major contributions at foundational tech giants in Silicon Valley, has centered on making participation in various forms...
Working for Social Change
No matter the source of your employment, whether in the commercial sector or academia, we all want our work lives to add up to something positive. Yet it is easy to wonder how this or that project actually affected the world for better or worse. What can we do to make the next project better? How...