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UX Maturity

As a team manager, I am especially interested in helping customers, executive stakeholders, and my peers in other functional areas (such as Engineering and Product Management) understand the benefits of User-Centered Design (UCD) and User Experience consulting services. I’ve recently written about UX Maturity Models (as well as written my own), and I am tracking with interest […]

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Engaging with executives

I wrote the business case for and built the UX team in the Operations board area when I was at SAP.   Under my direction, what started as a small team in the Americas grew to nearly 20 people globally.  Our work informed both strategic process improvements and the design of internal systems for the Chief […]

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Humanizing Business with Stories

During the first week of April, I had the opportunity visit Smith College, where I did my undergraduate degree.  I was there to talk to Anthropology majors, speak to a Methods class (Anthropology with a sprinkling of Design Thinking), and deliver a public lecture. It was great to be back on campus and interact with the […]

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I’m a People Nerd

In January I was interviewed by dScout for their People Nerd blog series.  dScout is a mobile research platform that spun off from innovation consultancy Gravity Tank, which was recently acquired by SalesForce.  The interview is called The how and why of building UX for SAP and ZS: Natalie Hanson on anthropology getting a seat at […]

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Themes in Ethnographic Research

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 […]

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