The promise of generative AI technologies is seductive to product leaders: frictionless research in which...
Tag: sensemaking
The Uncommon Good: Making Room for Radical Transition Imaginaries
Public, social and community organizations are, in many locales, driving systems change toward social and...
Fluidity and Friction: An Experiment in Ethnographic Foresight
Ethnography can be a divining rod for the future. Though speculative, the study of cultural signals to seed...
Scale, Nuance, and New Expectations in Ethnographic Observation and Sensemaking
Case Study—We consider new expectations for ethnographic observation and sensemaking in the next 20-25 years, as technology industry ethnographers' work unfolds in the increasing presence of the type of analytical capabilities specially trained (and self-training) machines can do ‘better’ and...
Physicalizations of Big Data in Ethnographic Context
With the Big Data hype, making digital data accessible and relatable for non-data experts is becoming an increasing challenge. In this paper we suggest Data Physicalization as a novel approach to facilitate conversations with collaborators about the meaning of data. While this challenge has been...
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...
Book Review: The Paradox of Sensemaking
Sensemaking: The Power of Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm Christian Madsbjerg 2017, 240 pp, Hachette Books Excerpt Christian Madsbjerg has done a huge amount to elevate the profile and impact of ethnography in corporate settings. As co-founder of ReD Associates, Madsbjerg makes a consistent...
Organizational Culture as Lazy Sensemaking: What Ethnographers Can Do about Fundamental Attribution Error
This essay represents the opinion of the author and not any of her employers, past or present. The Fundamental Attribution Error Lately I’ve been ruminating on the fundamental attribution error, also known as correspondence bias. Think of it as a lazy kind of sensemaking, a just-so story that lets...
How Autoethnography Enables Sensemaking across Organizations
Building on participatory innovation, and taking a personal and analytical autoethnographic approach we set out to investigate how innovative initiatives emerge in the interaction of multiple stakeholders across different organizations. As researchers, we are interested in understanding the lived...
Building Bridges between Management and the Workforce
This paper examines the sales force in a retail setting, considering how Business Anthropology can enlighten managerial practices as a means to defining organisational strategy. Specifically, we look at sales force engagement, motivation and reward – considering how to build bridges in the...