Advancing the Value of Ethnography

Tag: public sector

Amplifying Resilient Communities: Identifying Resilient Community Practices to Better Inform Health System Design

Amplifying Resilient Communities: Identifying Resilient Community Practices to Better Inform Health System Design

Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic has been an inflection point, bringing heightened awareness around the preparedness and resilience of public health systems in dealing with severe shocks. While the pandemic has...

Designing for Dynamics of Agency in NYC Homeless Shelters

Designing for Dynamics of Agency in NYC Homeless Shelters

Public sector innovation (PSI) is an emerging multidisciplinary field that is attracting practitioners from a wide range of sectors and industries, with a correspondingly broad set of skills and experience. PSI aims to significantly improve the services that a government has the responsibility to...

Ethnographies of Future Infrastructures

Ethnographies of Future Infrastructures

Article 4 in the series Data, Design and Civics: Ethnographic Perspectives On April 1, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced a $317 million federally funded initiative in textile innovation and manufacturing—a national consortium of public and private organizations to be led by MIT. It’s...

Innovation Teams, Mundane Innovation, and the Public Good

Innovation Teams, Mundane Innovation, and the Public Good

Article 2 in the series Data, Design and Civics: Ethnographic Perspectives The windows were dirty when I arrived on the fifteenth floor of City Hall. I had been hired as the Los Angeles’ Innovation Team’s in-house social communication researcher. My official title was “Design and Data Research...