This paper examines the resilience of human expertise in an age of Large Language Models (LLMs) and establishes...
Tag: mixed methods
Creating Resilient Research Findings: Using Ethnographic Methods to Combat Research Amnesia
Product teams, including those I work with, struggle to connect the challenges observed in prior research to issues that endure in the field and market space. As a shortcut for efficiency gains, product partners...
Ethnographic Perspectives on AI Chatbots in Customer Support
This study on the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) presents key...
Designing for Interactions with Automated Vehicles: Ethnography at the Boundary of Quantitative-Data-Driven Disciplines
Case Study—This case study presents ethnographic work in the midst of two fields of technological innovation: automated vehicles (AV) and virtual reality (VR). It showcases the work of three MSc. Techno-Anthropology students and their collaboration with the EU H2020 project ‘interACT’, sharing the...
Below the Surface of the Data Lake: An Ethnographic Case Study on the Detrimental Effect of Big Data Path Dependency at a Theme Park
Case Study—This case-study details how a team of anthropologists and a team of data scientists sought to help a Middle Eastern theme park make use of their big data platform to measure ‘the good customer experience’. Ethnographic research within the theme park revealed that visitors yearned to...
Displacing the Mind to the Body: Combining Methodologies to Address Socio-Ecological Crises
This paper integrates arts-based methodologies into research and design, bringing new ways of knowing to the...
Hybrid Methodology: Combining Ethnography, Cognitive Science, and Machine Learning to Inform the Development of Context-Aware Personal Computing and Assistive Technology
The not-too-distant future may bring more ubiquitous personal computing technologies seamlessly integrated into people's lives, with the potential to augment reality and support human cognition. For such technology to be truly assistive to people, it must be context-aware. Human experience of...
ReHumanizing Hospital Satisfaction Data: Text Analysis, the Lifeworld, and Contesting Stakeholders’ Beliefs in Evidence
Case Study—Declining clinician engagement, increasing rates of burnout, and stagnant patient and family experience scores have led hospital leadership at Seattle Children's Hospital to submit requests to a data scientist and an anthropologist to identify key themes of survey comments and provide...
Gaming Evidence: Power, Storytelling and the “Colonial Moment” in a Chicago Systems Change Project
Case Study—In 2016 The Chicago Community Trust (“The Trust”), a local Chicago foundation, partnered with Roller Strategies (“Roller”), an international professional services firm, to deploy an innovative mixed-methods approach to community-driven social change on the South Side of Chicago. This...
Just Add Water: Lessons Learned from Mixing Data Science and Design Research Methods to Improve Customer Service
Case Study—This case study provides an inside look at what occurs when methods from the data science and ethnographic fields are mixed to solve perennial customer service problems within the call center and cruise industries. The paper details this particular blend of ethnographic practitioners...