W3: Flash Mob Ethnography Workshop

Abstract

How might ethnographic research become more collaborative, cross-disciplinary and scalable? Can global networks of ethnographers be created, maintained and harnessed to gather real-time insights to pressing research questions? During this workshop, teams will conduct fieldwork in and around one of Tokyo’s newest and most popular shopping centers to examine the topic of designing for services in international contexts.

Approach

Approach or Agenda
Many fields are currently embracing more collaborative, open source ways of working. This workshop applies the open source model to the practice of ethnographic research by assembling ad-hoc teams to explore, document, photograph and sketch their way through one of Tokyo’s newest and most popular shopping centers.

Goals
The goal of this workshop is to build a network of corporate ethnographers and designers interested in exploring and sharing new methodologies for ethnographic research. In addition, this workshop aims to create a community around the use of ethnography in service design.

Key Benefits

This workshop will provide participants with:

  • Experience working collaboratively to identify ethnographic insights in international contexts.
  • An opportunity to consider the growing area of service design in industries such as food, retail, infrastructure.
  • Ideas for new methodologies for ethnographic research that can be conducted with clients

 

Structure

Schedule

  1. Introduction (30 minutes).
  2. Fieldwork (1 hour).
  3. Analysis and Writing Sprint (1 hour).
  4. Presentation and Wrap up (30 minutes).

 

Target Audience

Corporate ethnographers and designers who have an interest in developing and testing new methodologies for ethnographic fieldwork as well as curiosity about service design in the Japanese context.

Organizers

Laura Forlano is a writer, researcher and consultant based in New York City. Currently, she is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Interaction Design Lab at Cornell University. Her research interests include collaboration, social innovation and urban informatics.