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Origins of anthrodesign
Posted on January 9, 2017 4 Comments

Anthrodesign is an active online community of about 3000 practicing social scientists and interested colleagues from other disciplines. The focus of our dialogue is on the use of ethnographic methods in non-academic contexts. I created the listserv in 2002, and many of the reasons for its founding are the same reasons it continues to be so […]
Themes in Ethnographic Research
Posted on April 4, 2016 Leave a Comment

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to meet the design research community of practice at Fjord (the design firm acquired by Accenture) in Chicago. I was asked to speak to them about how anthropologists approach ethnographic research in a way that might be interesting or instructive for design research professionals. ZS competes with […]
UX is not a subset of CX
Posted on February 11, 2016 2 Comments
[This article was originally posted on ZS Associates’ CX Factor blog.] User Experience (UX) isn’t just about user interface design (though many conflate the two). Rather, the field is a convergence of art and science, including design, ergonomics and human factors engineering, the social sciences, and more. As a domain, UX has matured rapidly. Undergraduates […]
The Handbook of Business Anthropology
Posted on May 1, 2014 2 Comments
Today I got a first glimpse at the announcement for the Handbook of Business Anthropology, edited by Rita M. Denny and Patricia L. Sunderland. It will be available in May, but they are accepting pre-orders now with a 50% discount. You can review the Table of Contents, and if you’re interested in buying your own […]
Agile – Implications for UX Research
Posted on July 19, 2013 6 Comments
This Part 4 of a 4-Part series on Agile. As I mentioned earlier, one of the pleasures of working in both Lean and Agile working environments is that it’s extremely flexible, adaptable, and emergent. There is lots of room for experimentation! However, that also means that the summary in my prior posts is by no means exhaustive. It […]