Category Archives: Applied Anthropology

I’m a Storyteller: Modeling Users, and Crafting Analogies for Better Design

I use analogies. I’m constantly on the lookout for the perfect analogy to describe this phenomena or that. For example, how do you describe culture to someone?  If you go to the dictionary and recite: the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group -(see: Dictionary.com (Links to an externalContinue reading “I’m a Storyteller: Modeling Users, and Crafting Analogies for Better Design”

Ethnographic Archaeology: Iterative Prototyping in UX Research and Design

From the outset of the Stringer et al., paper I was a little put off by the mention that they had developed a form of UCD called, ‘curriculum-focused design’. In so far as curriculum is content, they just conducted user-research along with iterative prototyping. And I think this point is not beyond the authors otherwiseContinue reading “Ethnographic Archaeology: Iterative Prototyping in UX Research and Design”

The Needfinders: a Reflection on Patnaik and Becker’s seminal paper

Patnaik and Becker seem to give us a torch with which to light our path into that immersive, murky realm of qualitative data collecting and assessment. Among the several important takeaways I saw was that in doing social research, it’s easy to just gather data for the sake of gathering data, and you’ll be ableContinue reading “The Needfinders: a Reflection on Patnaik and Becker’s seminal paper”