When we think about the “Discovery” phase in the product development process, we often picture product owners, design, and researchers working to understand a problem area, the needs of end users in that area, and testing product ideas that might deliver on those needs. When no product exists yet,...
Tag: EPIC2022
Ethnography for the AI Age: How to Get Started
Artificial intelligence (AI) has made huge strides recently in areas like natural language processing and computer-generated images – every other week seems to bring another breathtaking headline. Engineers, developers, and policymakers in the AI community are more seriously grappling with the...
Resilient Customer Archetypes: How Research Teams Can Build an Enduring and Evolving Understanding of Users
Atlassian teams rely on a range of customer archetypes to empathize with customers, understand their problems, and design solutions that meet user needs. But what happens to these artifacts over time? Do they become anecdotal, fuzzy, weathered and smooth via repetition and distance from primary...
What’s Next versus What’s Valuable: Perspectives on the Value of Ethnography in a Future-Focused World
Ethnographers operating in the future-focused context of business consultancy face a core challenge. Our approach is holistic and human-centric, “based on the researcher sharing time and space with the people he or she wants to understand, establishing relationships with them and thereby...
Seeing the World at Scale and in Depth: A Journey with Big and Thick Data
When I was studying economics at university one of our professors introduced us to Jorge Luis Borges’s “On Exactitude in Science”, a one-paragraph story. It imagines an empire so enthralled by cartography that larger and larger maps of the place are built by successive generations until a map on...
EPIC2022 Video & Proceedings Now Available on Demand!
EPIC2022 Resilience was the 18th edition of the premier global conference on ethnography in business and organizations. Now you can read the full-length papers and case studies, and watch conference presentations on demand: EPIC2022 Papers and Case Studies are FREE to read, download, and share....
Q&A with Tiffany Tivasuradej
Tell us about yourself in one sentence. Anthropologist that’s exploring the future of work for her work and baking a lot when she’s not at work. Why did you say ‘yes’ to being on an EPIC committee? EPIC is such a great organisation and the annual conference is always fantastic - who could possibly...
Q&A with Robin Kwong
Tell us a bit about yourself. I'm neither an ethnographer nor a researcher, but found my way to the EPIC community through a curiosity about organisational culture and how to help people work better together. These days, I help news organisations adapt to a changing digital landscape, and, in my...
Q&A with Kristen Guth
Tell us about yourself in one sentence. I am a social scientist research leader focused on change at the intersections of strategy, technology, innovation, and the digital space. Describe your presentation in less than 10 words. A technique to fight research amnesia in organizational memory....
Q&A with Romit Raj
Tell us about yourself in one sentence. I am a design researcher and technologist. Describe your presentation in less than 10 words. Identifying resilient community practices to better inform health system design. Without giving too much away, what is the most interesting finding from your talk?...