‘Social’ is a hot word in technology circles; new startups crop up everywhere promising social experiences, the term ‘social fabrics’ crops up in the strategy statements of Google and the like. ‘Collaboration’ shows up in business magazines, web technology conferences, activist manifestos. However, there is still a lot of confusion around what social action looks like.

The default word here – ‘collaboration’ – is used to describe a whole range of social or collective acts, leading to confusion on what social action is, and making technology seem more promising than it often turns out. Without more nuanced categories for describing social behavior, product & design teams will continue to struggle to understand what making their product more ‘social’ means, and how to understand the ways in which people do things together. Read More »

As  design researchers, we often examine social categorizations– personas, life stages, generations, etc– to understand how commonalities across target populations can impact the way businesses interact with or cater to their customer base. In this piece, I examine the four main generation groups  (Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y) as they apply to the Chinese population with reference to their use of technology. Read More »

The study of material culture is a critical but under-explored area of contemporary anthropology with powerful implications for design research.  Of course, as cultural researchers, we have techniques to elicit insights about how people interact with the objects that fill their world, but it isn’t always enough to ask participants how they interact with the stuff that surrounds them, or even observe them putting their stuff to use.  Sometimes, a researcher has to get dirty.  Read More »