Advancing the Value of Ethnography

Tag: UX research

Human-Centered Data Science: A New Paradigm for Industrial IoT

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,”...

How Ethnographic Methods Make APIs More Usable

How Ethnographic Methods Make APIs More Usable

Application Programming Interfaces, commonly known as APIs, connect the front-end interfaces we see when we navigate the internet (like websites and apps) to the back-end systems, or databases, that store information. APIs enable people to carry out transactions online, like purchasing goods,...

The Perfect uberPOOL: A Case Study on Trade-Offs

The Perfect uberPOOL: A Case Study on Trade-Offs

Case Study—One of Uber’s company missions is to make carpooling more affordable and reliable for riders, and effortless for drivers. In 2014 the company launched uberPOOL to make it easy for riders to share their trip with others heading in the same direction. Fundamental to the mechanics of...

Regarding the Pain of Users: Towards a Genealogy of the Pain Point

This essay offers an analysis of the “pain point,” a commonplace figure of speech in UX design and contemporary business contexts more broadly. By situating this everday trope within a wider discourse of pain, and its politiciztion in the United States, I seek to problematize the modes of...

Breaking It Down: Integrating Agile Methods and Ethnographic Praxis

Breaking It Down: Integrating Agile Methods and Ethnographic Praxis

Critical thinkers that we are, researchers are skeptical of buzzwords, one-size-fits all methodologies, and facile business trends. We scowl as ‘ethnography’ is invoked just because someone actually talked with a customer. We say things like, “If you want to be Agile, try yoga.” Even so, we remain...

Working with Intuition

Working with Intuition

PechaKucha Presentation Evidence, today, can have very narrow definitions. For digital products, this type of evidence usually includes clicks and engagement metrics. I believe that in our effort to only listen to numbers and data, we have created a culture that looks down on intuition as...