Artifacts Session

A key tool in field research is a team-room that often doubles as a communication device. The Ethnographic War-Room artifact is a framework and model that we can all leverage as ethnographers to tell better stories and distill stronger insights. The artifact will consist of examples, tools, ephemera, gadgets and a point of view on how to best set up, maintain and utilize this under-valued presentation tool.

Road safety is a major societal concern today, despite countless research, technology and service developments. There is a need for deep contextual understanding when designing precautions, and perhaps a need for new perspectives on accident causes and prevention.The artifact intends to discuss two themes: Can research and the human centered concept stages inform and address a usually technology driven field? Can the scenario testing approach refine and improve the outcomes of the concept stage?

This artefact is meant to stimulate a discussion of to what extend ethnographic research can work as valuable ‘disruptions’ in the development of the public welfare sector. It emphasizes an awareness of how ethnographic contributions ‘live on’ in processes of modification and instrumentalization to take on various bureaucratically aesthetical forms that makes social reality applicable for public intervention.

the artifact is a poster to illustrate the opportunity for ethnographic research and design thinking in tackling the Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen.
Many of us have learned the relationship between disruptive innovation and sustaining innovation from Clayton M. Christensen’s The Innovator’s
Dilemma, the visualization adopted from the chart in the book, and reconstruct an argument on how an innovative business organization could utilize
ethnographic research and design thinking to bridge the gap, create opportunities, and stimulate dynamics.

We tried “Thiquik (thick + quick) Ethnography”, which took five days through the research to verification to enhance customer’s shopping experience and service productivity. By sharing a case at a bookstore in Osaka, Japan, and methodology with posters, a documentary video, and an interactive discussion board, we would like to encourage discussions on methodologies and possibilities of the “Thiquik Ethnography”.

During the design process, our perception and expectations of the user evolves, pulling and stretching the user from an imagined state to a real person, to an ideal composite known as the "persona". This artifact explores the roles, benefits and challenges design researchers expect users to play throughout the design process.

Visual representation of information such as charts, maps or diagrams aid comprehension of a given content. In this artifact we show two examples of diagrams that besides representing complex information to a given audience, they became the process by which the client discern new meaning and knowledge.