Research Interests

My research has historically spanned four broad areas:

Workplace Studies.  I am an anthropologist who studies workplaces and how people work (the Anthropology of Work), and the role of technology (Science and Technology Studies) in that context.  I have a particular interest in how institutions respond to macro-economic, industry, and regional trends, and how the organizational response to those changes affects the lives of employees.

User Experience.  I have enjoyed watching the evolution of the field of User Experience from it’s early days to the recent emergence of Enterprise User Experience as a distinct specialty within the field.  That interest leads me to write about things like a Maturity Model for UX, how to contend with the conflation of UX with Design Thinking, and more.

Collaboration.  For most of my career, I have found myself surrounded by individuals and teams with deep expertise in domains unfamiliar to me (such as computer science, and more recently data science).  As a result, I am also curious about and committed to making interdisciplinary teams work.  I recognize that as an anthropologist with training in design theory, my skills alone aren’t sufficient to meet the needs of my executive stakeholders, customers, and colleagues.

Art & Culture.  For as long as I can remember, I have been interested in how artists express themselves in relation (or response) to their socio-cultural context.  This is not an interest in art history.  It is an interest in how creative expression changes in response to the conditions in which artists find themselves.