EPIC Profiles Series A PhD in French Literature and Cultural Studies from Duke University (1988-1994), Maria Bezaitis may appear to have a surprising career as a scientist inside Intel’s Interaction and Experience Lab. But as she says, her vast literary studies exploring modernist literary...
Tag: research
Toilet Talk: The Subtle Art of Awkward Research
Imagine you are dealing with bladder or bowel problems, and while sometimes your life is joyful, you also...
Re-evaluating Usability and Strategic Research: Delivering Value via Research Practice
Usability studies are sometimes devalued as mechanical work, as opposed to ethnography and other kinds of research considered to be a more strategic and engaging. This contributes to a perception of usability evaluation as lower status, or appropriate for early career researchers—work that one...
Ethnographic ‘Weirdness’: Attending to Indicators of the Unfamiliar
This presentation begins with ethnographic research of an Indonesian tuna fishery in which a field partner describes unfamiliar cultural behavior as ‘weird’. Using that moment as a starting point, the paper then undertakes a reflection on the usage and meaning of the term. It explores ‘weirdness’...
Center Frame: Agency in the Lives of Researchers
PechaKucha Presentation We try to avoid being on camera, but as researchers, are we ever really out of frame? Centered around a life-changing project that had lackluster results, this piece is a meditation on our agency, or lack of agency, as researchers. Our work gives us unique glimpses into...