Workshops

Curator 
Neal Patel & Irish Malig
Session Time
Sunday, October 14, 2012
13:30-16:45

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Grounding the abstract research topic: Using games to get tangible with the intangible

Organizers
Martha Cotton
Brynn Freeman, Sarah Garcia, Shelley Sather

What happens when a time-pressed researcher is confronted with an intangible subject where observation is difficult and conversation barely scratches the surface? When faced with this challenge, workshop organizers have infused their research design with principles of Design. A focus on these principles has yielded an approach to games that can be used to better understand abstract topics when engaging with research participants.
Games become facilitation tools that give research participants tangible interaction and response nodes within the context of complex and non-rational spaces. Games can be central to creating researcher-participant interactions that are rich yet targeted while respecting time constraints of a research environment. Workshop participants will learn to apply the design principle of tangibility to research methodologies and walk away with fundamental techniques for gathering data in new ways.

Ethnography and Direct Action: The 99% Spring Activism Project

Organizers
Chris Darrouzet - Water Cooler Logic

Experiential/Participatory Introduction to The 99% Spring, a social activism project conducted in Spring 2012 in cities across the country, orientating and training 45,000 people in history, philosophy and skills of Non Violent Direct Action. The 99% Spring grew out of Occupy Wall Street and other ‘Occupy___’ scenes. Workshop, 3 parts: (1) training segments: 99% Spring training exercises in DNVA (including role-plays) create practical/kinetic, ethnographic affinity for the movement. (2) Facilitated discussion(s) of ethnography, direct action, activism. (3) Open-ended exploration of spaces, strategies, and tactics social activism may suggest for ethnographers.

Using Models to Communicate Your Research Findings

Organizers
Marty Gage - Lextant
Susana La Luz-Houchin - Lextant

Traditional text-based reports are overwhelming to digest and frequently end up buried on a desk. In this workshop we walk attendees through the modeling process, creating models from the raw data that comes from qualitative research. We will start with example raw data or comments from users and work from the bottom up to build a model. The workshop will expose participants to each step in this structured process. By completing the modeling process first-hand, participants will be well-equipped to return to their respective practices with new tools and techniques for rigorously synthesizing and modeling data that focuses on what's important.

A Sense Of Savannah

Organizers
Daniel Goddemeyer - Unitedsituation

A Sense of Savannah is a workshop that aims to explore, bring back and encourage a more aware sensory interaction with our urban environment and it’s sensory stimuli. We will explore how we, as observers and designers, can create richer interactions with our cities by experiencing the urban fabric utilizing our five human senses of touch, taste, smell, sound and sight. During the workshop we will create inspiration and ideas through storytelling and sharing to come up with urban interventions that address specific wants and needs to create new sensory interactions with the metropolitan fabric of Savannah.

Experience Design Modeling

Organizers
Aaron Silvers - Problem Solutions, LLC
Megan Bowe - Rustici Software

As our worlds become more connected, we have both increasing opportunity and obligation to design experiences that recognize individuals in their context that serve to continuously improve ourselves and our environment. Experience Mapping provides a means to surface implicit and tacit information vital to effective design of experiences.

Participants in this workshop will work with a variety of "lenses" vital to designing meaningful experiences: storytelling, magic, games and improvisation. Participants will employ these lenses leveraging a design process that focuses on both goals and outcomes.

Tangible Empathy: Research to change the design of touchpoints

Organizers
Toi Valentine - Adaptive Path

Conducting research to inform design is an expected and required practice; however, the translation from findings to actionable design is not always apparent. Using traditional ethnographic methods with a twist, we, as designers, can design stronger and more empathetic experiences for people. We will go out into the heart of Savannah with the goal to better understand people's "stuff" and their interactions with that stuff and learn how that can define future experiences.

Workshop ‘Maru’: Connecting Local Regions for Revival

Organizers
Yu Ogawa, Ippei Numata - The University of Tokyo
Fumiko Ichikawa, Hiroshi Tamura - Hakuhodo Inc.

How might we create futures for the local communities? When we think of reviving the ever-shrinking local communities, we tend to focus onto understanding the issues and features of each community one at a time. However, we see opportunities in connecting multiple ‘locals’, each of which could help stimulate one another and to identify new opportunities. Based on series of fieldwork and workshops that took place in the locals of Italy and Japan, participants of this workshop will learn how they could utilize their skillset in ethnography and organize cross-local workshops to identify new opportunities for locals.

The Billion-Dollar Business Model: Refreshing Your Brand for the 21st Century

Organizers
Jamie Bowerman - Bowhous
Krista Siniscarco - SCAD

How do we take the data that we collect as ethnographers and make it actionable? The goal of this workshop is to propose a method of answering this question through the introduction of service journey mapping and brand analytics as a way to refresh customer service offerings. To achieve these objectives the workshop will be divided into three main sections; field research, documenting the customer experience and refreshing the service through brand analysis. The workshop participants will engage in activities to document and reenact a customer service experience to gain better understanding of the process, supporting system and customer emotion. Brand analysis methods will be introduced to allow participants to reflect on core brand attributes and incorporate those attributes to refresh service offerings.

Journey Mapping

Exploring Gameplay to Understand Principles of Design for Social Systems

Organizers
Dianna Miller

Come play with us… seriously. This session is for researchers and designers interested in using game design to model and explore services and other social systems. Through a simple process of rapid game development, participants will create conditions for decision-making and other emergent behavior, challenge assumptions surrounding control of the design process, and experience the power of spontaneous transformation and feedback. We’ll discuss topics like meta-design, improvisation, tangible cues, and game mechanics. Participants will leave with a set of principles and techniques they can apply to generative research or collaborative design sessions with users, clients, or internal teams.

Designing for Empathy

Organizers
Barbara Burton - Artefact Design Group
Dave McGolgin - Artefact Design Group

Products, messaging, and services have the potential to contribute to a more empathic society, better able to face the scale of our shared problems. As an EPIC member and ethnographer, empathy is your livelihood. In this workshop, we seek to apply your expertise in a new way. How can our research identify opportunities to create more empathy-rich experiences for our users? What can our designs incorporate to seize these opportunities? In this workshop, we will share examples and co-develop strategies with the goal of actualizing design for preferable outcomes, while also providing a novel approach to innovation. 

Video Editing Workshop for Ethnographers

Organizers
Nan Bress - Docnography, LLC

This workshop seeks to provide a primer “how-to-edit-and-share-video” intended for ethnographic researchers who wish to edit their own footage as part of their final deliverable to corporate audiences. We will focus on the key tool-kit skills required for ethnographers. This workshop is intended for absolute beginners, moderately-skilled editors, and anyone who wants to compare the leading editing systems and distribution platforms. Hands-on instruction will be provided for: Final Cut Pro 7 & X, Adobe Premier, Avid, free on-line software platforms, and DIY solutions including camera-to-smartphone editing. As a bonus, participants are invited to borrow several steadicam rigs and cameras and bring them out to the streets of Savannah.

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