One of the most persistent factors limiting the impact of ethnography in business is that research projects often stop with a cataloging findings and implications rather than generating opportunities that directly enable the findings. For social scientists, their specialty in mining deep insights from ethnographic data doesn't necessarily prepare them to create a divergent set of action items that can be executed across different facets of their business. Similarly, as designers increasingly become involved in using contextual research to inform their design work, they may find themselves holding onto a trove of raw data but with little awareness of how to turn it into design. How can designers and researchers work with ethnographic data to create new things for business to do?
Participants in this workshop, collaborating in teams, will learn an effective framework for synthesizing raw data (to be gathered before and during the workshop) into insights, and then creatively using those insights to develop a range of business concepts that respond to those insights. While the framework includes a step to identify key filters that will ultimately prioritize across all generated concepts, the emphasis in this workshop will be to think as broadly as possible during ideation, truly strengthening the creative link between "data" and "action." By the end of the workshop, participants will have developed a range of high-level concepts that respond to a business problem and integrate a fresh, contextual understanding of that problem.
The workshop flow is as follows
- Introduction to workshop
- Fieldwork exercise
- Synthesis, or turning field data into insights – explanation and exercise
- Ideation, or turning insights into solutions – explanation and exercise
- Final discussion
This workshop is appropriate for anyone interested in learning more about using field data to help businesses solve problems. For designers or social scientists new to the connections between the two, this would be a great introduction, while more seasoned practitioners will benefit from the opportunity to step back from their own (often implicit) process and reflect.
A few weeks before EPIC, registered workshop participants will receive an assignment by email. The assignment will explain how to conduct a brief observation in a local retail setting.
During the workshop, participants should bring a notepad and paper for their fieldwork activity. Digital cameras are not required but are welcomed.
Organizer
Steve Portigal is the founder of Portigal Consulting, a boutique firm that brings together user research, design and business strategy. Portigal Consulting helps clients to discover and act on new insights about themselves and their customers. In addition to regularly speaking at design and marketing events, Steve has taught Design Research at the California College of Art and the Involution Master Academy. He writes regularly for interactions, Core77 and the Portigal Consulting blog, All This ChittahChattah. Steve is an avid photographer who has a Museum of Foreign Grocery Products in his home.
