Advancing the Value of Ethnography

Genre: Perspective

Visual Ethnography for Consumer Insights

Visual Ethnography for Consumer Insights

Hasty Storytelling is an EPIC2024 silver sponsor. EPIC is a nonprofit organization, conference, and community, and sponsors support programming that is developed by independent committees members and invites diverse, critical perspectives. Ethnographers have always found ways to do path breaking...

Best Laid Plans…An Ethnographic Approach to Foresight

Best Laid Plans…An Ethnographic Approach to Foresight

What is Foresight? Foresight is an umbrella term used to describe a wide variety of methodologies and approaches for considering and preparing for possible and probable futures in order to help inform present and future courses of action. Today, it is an important and widely deployed practice that...

Recalibrating UX Labs in the Covid-19 Era

Recalibrating UX Labs in the Covid-19 Era

Early in 2020 as a result of Covid-19, Convo—along with companies around the world—moved all research in India to remote solutions. This was quite a change and presented new challenges to the research team. While our preference is almost always to go in-home, particularly for foundational and...

Using Employee Opinion Surveys Ethnographically

Using Employee Opinion Surveys Ethnographically

When my boss asked me to carry out an employee opinion survey in our company, I had to overcome my ingrained prejudices against surveys in general. Once I did, I learned how valuable an ethnographic approach to surveys can be. In my previous academic work, I had embedded myself into a scientific...

Needed: Anthropologists in Insurance

Needed: Anthropologists in Insurance

I work in life insurance. No, I’m not an actuary or underwriter—I’m an anthropologist, and it’s a great fit. I began my career working with refugees in the public and nonprofit sectors, then spent seven years teaching anthropology courses to undergraduates, and I’ll admit that insurance wasn’t on...

10 Things You Should Know about Moving from Academia to Industry

10 Things You Should Know about Moving from Academia to Industry

In the fall of 2016, I made the jump from academia to UX research. As opportunities for permanent employment in the social sciences are becoming more and more scarce, this move is becoming increasingly common. And yet, I made this transition with few resources or mentorship, feeling unprepared and...

Culture Needs a Fool-Proof Definition

Culture Needs a Fool-Proof Definition

People love the idea of culture. Finding out what makes France French, Spain Spanish or Denmark Danish is why we travel. We see culture as a manifestation of the greatest human achievements – we flock to art galleries and read the latest Booker Prize–winning novel. But if we’re so naturally...