Flexibility and the Curatorial Eye: Why and how well-documented, ethnographically inspired fieldwork sustains value over time
Submitted by epicadmin on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 19:16.This paper discusses a key distinguishing feature of ethnographic work, the ability to sustain value over time, and describes how that ability generates business impact. The business benefit is visible at two time scales. Within the timeframe of a given project, ethnographers are flexible enough to refine and redefine the scope and ask new questions. After the project has completed, carefully curated ethnographic materials can answer new questions not posed until years after the project has ended. Two cases illustrate the value-generating qualities of ethnographic work: one recently conducted example about drinking water access in India and one conducted ten years ago about mobile sales forces in multi-national organizations. Discussion of these cases illustrates the importance of flexibility and the curatorial eye for generating business value from ethnography.
Name that segment!: Questioning the Unquestioned Authority of Numbers
Submitted by epicadmin on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 19:16.In many companies, numbers equal authority. Quantitative data is often viewed as more definitive than qualitative data, while its shortcomings are overlooked. Many of us have worked to marry quantitative with qualitative methods inside organizations to present a fuller view of the people for whom we develop. One area of research that increasingly needs to blend quantitative and qualitative methods is user segmentations. Our software technology product team has been using a segmentation based on quantitative data since 2005. One outcome of this effort has been the development of an algorithm–based “typing” tool intended to be used as a standard tool in recruiting for all segmentation-focused research. We learned that the algorithm was an impenetrable black box, its inner workings opaque even to those who owned it internally. This case study looks at how qualitative research came up against the impenetrable quantitative authority of a segmentation and its unassailable henchman, the typing tool, and subsequently contributed to the redesign of future segmentation methodologies and the integration of qualitative research as a key component of segmentation creation.
William Gibson, Bruce Springsteen and the Dearth of Style in Applied Ethnographic Writing
Submitted by epicadmin on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 19:16.In “How Fiction Works,” (2008) literary critic James Wood encapsulates the central tradition of the novel like so: “Realism, seen broadly as truthfulness to the way things are [ . . . ] cannot be mere verisimilitude, cannot be mere lifelikeness, or life sameness, but what I must call lifeness, life on the page, life brought to different life by the highest artistry.” (p. 247 emphasis original). Replace “realism” with ”ethnography” and it is hard to conceive of a better description of what most of us would most like to achieve in our work. “Truthfulness to the way things are” gets nicely to all of the important moments of what we do — observation, description, inscription, interpretation. But in that last, crucially active phrase, “brought to different life by the highest artistry,” there is perhaps more room between author and page than we are comfortable with as scientists, as researchers. Most of “How Fiction Works” is focused on that gap, for although the creation of a slight mismatch between what character or narrator understands and what the reader should understand is the very definition of irony (according to Wood, at least), it is also where style is embodied, where the work of fiction “triples” to encompass ‘reality,’ it’s perception, and reflective commentary on both. In this paper, I lay out how we can move “style’ up the ladder of importance in how we think, write, and talk about the work we do.
The Montage Workshop - The Recreation of Realization
Submitted by epicadmin on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 19:16.This paper argues that we need to reconsider the role of anthropologists and research partners in user driven innovation processes (hereafter UDI process). In order for anthropology to have an impact and stay relevant in today's economic climate anthropologists must also assume the role as facilitator for the UDI process.
Numbers Have Qualities Too: Experiences with Ethno-Mining
Submitted by epicadmin on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 19:16.Field research holds a special place for those who conduct it. It is also our anchor for relevance in the corporation. This paper explores the authors’ experiences with “ethno-mining”, a way of joining data base mining and ethnography. Since 2004 we have been using a variety of sensing and behavioral tracking technologies in conducting field research. We will present the main characteristics of doing ethno-mining, compare ethno-mining to other field research technologies, highlight the strengths of ethno-mining in co-creating data with participants and conclude by noting how the representations have opened new conversations and discourses inside the corporation. In this way, these new opportunities to collect sometimes counterintuitive data contributes to the research itself as well as the ongoing process of constructing oneself as relevant.
