Anthropology in UX Research: Design & Business Applications

[00:00:00]Portland Oregon her work spans a breath of sectors and industries including retail e-commerce Health Care computer hardware and software consumer technology Automotive Insurance Home Improvement and Community Development in addition to freelancing she has worked with incorporate agency and startup design teams she combines her anthropology training with a user centered design approach to solve real problems advocate for people and their Val vales and help businesses feel confident in their decisions she received her ma and applied anthropology from the University of Memphis in 2011 and her ba in anthropology from eard college in 2009 she blogs about business design anthropology and careers at www.

[00:00:51]anthropology.com and without further Ado I will hand over the microphone to Amy all right thank you so much Vernon um I appreciate that really nice introduction and I'm going to go ahead and share my desktop uh which will show my slides okay so can I get some confirmation that you can see my slides anyone ver Vernon are you able to see my slides I am yes I don't know if you can hear me or not yes um no I couldn't but um thank you for letting me know yes Clara thank you for chiming in and everyone else okay great um so I should probably be able to take up the full hour um with my presentation and then there's going to be a Q&A session at the end and um I'm happy to take any uh questions that you might have about anything I discussed um and likewise you can get in touch with me after the presentation I'll have my contact info at the end in case you want to get in touch so thank you again for um joining me for this presentation I'm really excited to um talk to what seems like a somewhat diverse audience of anthropologists professors students um maybe some ux uh design and business practitioners um kind of a good mix there so so um I hope everyone's able to get something out of it and I'll go ahead and start the agenda I have set out for the presentation today um we'll start with just a little bit about me uh my background my education and um career history so far um and then I'll get into the main topic of the presentation um looking at uh my work in ux design and business and um how I'm applying an anthropological perspective and toolkit um in my work and um given the time constraints today I won't be able to get into too much detail about the work or different projects so I'll kind of just show a variety of the things that I've worked on um and then I'll wrap up with some final thoughts on you know what I've learned so far um as an anthropologist working in this field of work I'm also a huge fan of Twitter and conversations on Twitter um about Live Events conferences and presentations and things so if you'd like to live tweet or um send me a message or a tweet um over there then you can do that at Amy Santi um and this webinar is um graciously being hosted by the American anthropological Association um and so you can tweet at them as well okay so I'll start off with a bit about myself starting with my kind of geographic Journey that I've made um so far in my life I was born in Florida in St Petersburg and I went to undergrad at eard College um and after um undergrad I made my way to Memphis Tennessee for grad school at the University of Memphis um and following graduation and getting my masters un applied anthropology um I moved to Bloomington Illinois which is in Central Illinois basically to work at State Farm Insurance and um then after that I went to Portland Oregon so it's kind of made this interesting path across the country lived in lots of interesting um different places and worked at lots of different places um and so um I've had a couple of jobs here in Portland and now am doing um independent Consulting so here in Portland I live with my partner Isaac saxs um and our herd of kitten children and so from the top left that's Albert um over to the right Adonis the white cat in the bottom I don't know if you could have guessed but her name is snowball and the cat in the bottom left corner is Ernest so that's our happy little family and um I just thought I'd share a couple of other nonprofessional non-career related things about myself um I I love TV and movies um there's a lot of good stuff out there right now I bet a lot of you have your Netflix and Hulu accounts that you're spending a lot of time with just like me um board games have a lot of nerdy Hobbies here gardening um food and Portland is a really great place uh for food has a great um and growing food Community it's lots of awesome restaurants um anthropolog ising is my blog and so while that is related to professional interests um it's definitely something I spend a lot of time doing it's a hobby of mine and then public radio I would say that's another thing I spend a lot of time doing as well listening to NVR um one more quick tidbit about my myself um is that I knew I wanted to be an anthropologist when I was 14 years old and this was a screenshot from the uh Opening screen of this old computer game called Amazon Trail and it's kind of it's basically the same thing as Oregon Trail except it's in the Amazon rainforest and um long story short you meet an ethnobotanist which is a subfield of anthropology and I kind of got interested in that and very curious about what it was and started exploring it um and so that's my origin story as an anthropologist um and the last thing that I want to mention is that I'm a practicing Anthropologist so basically what that means is I apply my anthropology training to solve real world problems and build a knowledge base through anthropology so that's um different from academic anthropologists who work in the academy um who teach um and do research within universities um so my work is solely focused on practice and then I occasionally you know like to try to tie it back to um The Academy when I'm able um and so I mention this because this is the basis of my perspective and my experiences as an anthropologist Anthropologist so just keep that in mind as we're going along so I'll tell you some uh information about my educational and career history and I've already touched on this a little bit in terms of where I've gone to school um and where I've but this is just another way of looking at um kind of a timeline of that um the and the different Milestones that have happened in my career so far um starting out with undergrad and going through um the different jobs and roles that I've had and what interests me about this is not just the different places that I've worked but also the different roles that I've had um they have been very similar for the most part but different in their own ways and that has depended a lot on the context of where I worked so working in big corporation like State Farm versus a small um design agency like empirical uh working at a startup that exists within a corporate setting um at spenell and now um being on my own as an independent or freelancer um if you'd like to call it that um it's all of these have provided me with a lot of experiences and perspectives that have been really helpful and the other way I like to look at this timeline is that my understanding of anthropology as a discipline and the practice of anthropology um and how I look at my career and my role these have evolved and grown over time so I've just it's my understanding has gotten better um starting with my foundational learning and my education of course but going into the real world actually working doing projects having jobs um you know my the way I think about anthropology now is definitely different from how I thought of it uh two years years ago four years ago um and even back when I started um in 2004 as an undergrad and this might seem like common sense but I just find it helpful to remind myself that my understanding is always evolving and so even in a year or two from now I'll probably have a bit different of a perspective on things okay so working in user experience design and business and so my my role is a user experience researcher and there's a lot of different names and titles I can have um but I work in the context of design um I work in within the design process and I also work typically within business settings so these all kind of go together okay so my role user experience researcher and you might hear me um refer to this as a ux researcher it's just a shorthand way of saying user experience um I'm not sure why they chose ux it could also be uee but anyway that's beside the point so I want to start by um talking about what user experience research actually is and it's exactly what it sounds like it's research that is done to understand and inform the experiences people have when interacting with basically anything that other human beings create or design and this can be a product it can be a service a social service um it can be a website it can be a system um within the government um a you know a company system a system of computers technology um it's really applicable to pretty much um anything that human beings create themselves because they make decisions about how those things should be and that's the act of design and so one uh one other thing I want to mention here um that's important about this is the research user experience research is done to not only understand these experiences and the people who use them and the context in which they exist but also to inform new experiences and to inform current experiences in the act of you know evaluating and improving them and user experience research is part of a broader approach to Pro product design called user centered design and the central premise or the underlying driver of UCD is that people should be at the center of design and the best products are designed with people in mind um and again that might make you know that might seem like common sense um especially if you're coming from an anthropology perspective you know going to the people who are affected by decisions um participatory action research participatory design and things like that um but it it's not as common as you might think although it is becoming more common so UCD puts people at the core of design decisions so they're at the core in addition to you know expertise from technology and design and product people um but UC also considers everything about people who are going to use a design or interact with a design so what they need what their goals are what they're motivated by what they value um and also their feedback on a product or on a service in order to make it more meaningful to them so again this seems pretty straightforward but it hasn't always been done this way um a lot of these are some photos um actually of places that I've worked um and for the most part design and business decisions get made in places like these in conference rooms and in cubicles in um big campuses corporations startups you know places like that and this is the traditional approach um where decisions are made by experts um kind of in a top- down fashion um again that's something we talk about in anthropology um where decisions are made at the top rather than taking the time to talk to other people um understanding the people who are affected by decisions and within design and business um experts are people like software Engineers uh marketing people designers and uh pretty much you know operations any other role that you can find in a business um those are experts they're people who are really good at their jobs they know what they're doing um but the difference with UCD is that it brings the external component um into play it puts people at the core of the process again um valuing their feedback and bringing them in as a stakeholder with design and technology and this is really one of the main reasons I'm attracted to this field of work um because I'm very interested in advocacy um advocating for people who may not have a voice and decisions um and in business and Design there are lots of ways to be an advocate so this approach to design has been going on for a few decades um it's been called different things and it's definitely still evolving um and it's really been picking up speed in the past five or 10 years but um there are still a lot of organizations who basically deny the value of including people in the process um on the flip side you have companies like Google and in which makes Turbo Tax and um LinkedIn and just uh numerous other um Fortune 50 companies startups not to mention more and more government organizations and nonprofits who are adopting a user Center design approach in their work um related to this is that my a big part of my job is convincing people of the value of user centered design um especially within organizations that are kind of behind the times you know people who organizations uh with people who want to do things kind of the old fashion way because it's more comfortable um and so that's a regular component to my my work all right so I'll talk more about how I got interested in this line of work and got into got into it actually kind of like the path I took um so first of all it was not a straightforward path um this was not something I set out to do I did not set out to go into user experience or design or business um in fact I hadn't even heard the term user experience until I was in my first job at State Farm so that was well after graduate school um at least a few months into my first job I started learning about user experience um but backing up a little as an undergraduate um I was broadly interested in culture and anthropology in general um like many of us um and during this time and through grad school I I realized that I really like doing qualitative research and I was good at it and that's um that's pretty much the main thing I do today there's a lot of other components to this type of role but that's one of my main skill sets um and so that I would say is the beginning of um going on this path um in grad school I focused on um doing applied Research into social issues like poverty healthare um Community Development and um was very interested in those things of course um and I also took a class from um Dr Carrie brondo at University of Memphis called culture and consumerism and I started to get interested in the topic and learned at a very high level just the basics about how anthropology can be applied to um studying consumer culture and uh the systems that are that exist to create Goods um and and just all those different really interesting things but from an anthropological perspective um and of course the recession definitely played a role because when I graduated with my masters I basically would have taken any job I could get my hands on um there were not a lot of jobs I didn't really have that much experience it was 2011 um and so my point there is that um I the I got a couple job offers and the best job offer I got um at the time was to work at State Farm as a consumer research analyst uh you know they were um looking for entry-level researchers they were interested in my background in anthropology and um you know again my qualitative research skill set and so it was a great fit and I was really excited to go into my first job um when I was at State Farm I worked in the in in the research Department with lots of different types of people but some of the people I got to work with were um user experience and usability people and um working with them I just found this to be a really interesting um area of practice um in terms of using my skills and impacting product design and services and websites and all of that fun stuff and it also sounded way more exciting than traditional uh market research and consumer research and that could have been my path as well but I saw differences in those um in in in a number of ways which um I think will Service uh during the rest of the presentation um but I saw enough differences to decide to pursue the user experience and design path and so I began to explore user experience further um I moved to Portland and looked for ux jobs and I was um lucky enough I guess to get one because there weren't a lot of them um I got one at a small design agency called empirical and at that point I basically just jumped in and learned as I went along um I did a lot of learning on the job I started going to more professional events um joined groups read a ton of stuff and I do all these things still because there's so much more to learn um you know networking talking with ux people and things like that um and so at this point it was pretty clear to me that I wanted to do um user experience for a few different reasons um again applying my anthropology training to my work that was really important to me um impacting business impacting design you know seeing the fruits of my labor um knowing that my work actually means something and it's going towards solving problems um being at the Forefront of design and technology and working on really interesting things that's really exciting um working with a lot of amazing talented people um in lots of different roles and learning from those people and one the last thing for me is that um this type of work is growing in demand and so it seemed like a safe bet in terms of job security so I want to show the definition of user experience research one more time um just because um the the next few slides are going to be focusing more on this so again it's research that is done to understand and inform the experiences people have when interacting with a product service or system so there's a number of different questions that ux uh or design research as um some people call it um seek to address so some of these things are um who are the people who use our product or service or the people who might use it at some point what are these people like what are the things that they care about what are their lives like um what are their needs their preferences um the things that they value most um and what are their goals and mo motivations if you're looking at a particular product or a potential product that doesn't exist um you can ask how the product or service might solve the problem of the target audience so you have a group of people if you understand their problems enough then your product should be designed to solve those problems and if it doesn't if it's not designed in that way it's probably going to fail um related to the previous point of what could what could an organization do to make their product or service relevant and meaningful to a group of people and relevant relevant and meaningful basically mean valuable um how do you provide value to others along the lines of usability um we might ask is the product is the website the service whatever it might be is it usable can people actually use it and achieve their tasks and their goals um without getting frustrated without exiting without throwing the thing out the window um is it learnable can people understand quickly how to to can they learn it quickly and can they understand how to use it and if there's a product that currently exists how are they how are people currently interacting with it what is that current experience like and then you can figure out what you're doing well and what things need to be improved so when I'm doing research uh when anyone is doing ux research um the outputs or deliverables the same the information that we give to other people um in the form of findings insights um and other typ tools um those things go into the design and business process and they're used for the intention is for them to be used in design and business decision making essentially so my role essentially is to provide information that other people can use to make decisions and hopefully create um good user experiences I have a list here of 10 outcomes of doing user experience research and these are not um you know results like reports that's that could be an outcome or a result of doing research but these are a little bit um more uh I'm not sure but let me just go ahead and start with the first one so um the first outcome of ux research and this is actually one of the most important ones for me um is getting people people who exist outside of a company or an organization getting people at a seat at the table with business and technology so when you're in business you talk a lot about stakeholders and there's different stakeholders within your organization from the business side and the design side and the technology side and um you in my mind I think it's really important to bring in uh people from outside the company or the organization the user as many um people refer to them um get them a seat at the table and see them as an equal stakeholder so another outcome um design or improve a product or service based on an understanding of the people who interact with it or who could potentially interact with it and I talked a little bit about that just a few minutes ago outcome number three make sure the things we design actually meet people's needs and actually solve their problems and fit into their lives in a relevant meaningful way as all of you know there's a lot of stuff out there that that doesn't really solve a problem it doesn't really meet a need it kind of just exists because it can or someone decided that it we could do this we have the technology um and the ability so why not and a lot of that stuff isn't very valuable and relevant um so it's kind of one of my goals is to make sure that we're doing the opposite so number four um validating and disproving assumptions so we we always have assumptions in design and business about how things should go and some of them are right and some of them are wrong and research is a way to make sure we are understanding which ones are right and which ones are wrong and making changes based on what we learn and so that's essentially the act of Designing Based on data and information not guessing at something not assuming um and not just relying solely on our expertise but again talking to people and learning about them outcome number five um identify problems and opportunities that are not obvious um and so you know in organizations we might think we know everything that's happening but if we do some research we might find out that there's a whole unexplored area we need to look into or new product opportunities um or problems with a website that we didn't know existed outcome number six have a better idea of how to design a product or service and know what not to do and that kind of relates to previous points but again knowing what direction to go in um what's going to be uh what will make people the most happy what will um make the business money um you know all trying to um help everyone who is involved achieve their goals but also knowing the direction that you don't want to go in so if you learn something in research um they might tell you we should choose uh you know route a and not route B number seven um providing direction for design and business decisions um to do a couple things here minimize risk in business and decision-making um increasing and maximizing success um based on your decisions and differentiating um an organization or company from competitors related to that uh for number eight is saving money um and it's been shown time and time again that if you um wait to fix things um you know after you put a product out um and there's been many examples in history of this um or if you put a website out like healthcare.gov or if you put a particular car out and there's something wrong with it um or and it can come down to little products too it doesn't have to be big stuff like that um it's more expensive to fix things afterwards than to identify problems ahead of time um get feedback ahead of time and then fix them before you put them out number nine um this is another really important one um ux research helps us remind ourselves that we are not designing for ourselves um and this happens at a lot of organizations and companies um especially technology ones where um you might be working on an app a website or any other kind of product and um you might feel the urge to design it in the way that you would want to use it or um to make make yourselves happy as a user of that product um but it's important to make sure that we understand who the users actually are um who potential audiences are for a product or service and to U make sure we design for those people as well and number 10 the last um outcome for ux research is building a culture of empathy within organizations and this is um another one I have on here that's really important to me because organizations that have empathy for other people who are affected by their decisions are going to be more successful um if you if you ignore feedback and um perspectives of those folks then you're kind of just going to go in the wrong direction you're going to end up putting stuff out there that isn't valuable um and empathy is really understanding your your user or other people who you're designing for uh to the point that you make decisions based on what they care about even if you disagree um with their rationale all right so I bet you're wondering how anthropology fits into all of this um and hopefully I I you know touched on that a bit um so far but I want to talk more about it so anthropology is the study of The Human Experience I think that's the most simple definition that you could have for anthropology and what it's all about um it's about understanding people their experiences and their lives and so the more you understand the people you're designing for the more valuable and useful and relevant your products and services will be and of course anthropologists we're trained to do this and typically we do it really well and we do it in a really unique way compared with um people from other disciplines so um and of course you know we're not the only ones who can contribute um in this way but we we definitely have a valuable and unique perspective to contribute so my point here is if you take anthropology and you add it to design and business um what you're going to get is um going to be really beneficial to everyone and there are this is a just a snapshot of some of the books that I have um related to doing anthropology and business um in it's various um in various ways it could be organizational studies it can be um design ethnography it can be um or just any aspect of doing anthropology uh in consumer research and user experience um and all of that there are tons of resources out there that talk about all of these different things and I definitely encourage you to check them out um and also I can share um later on I can share um some of the resources that I like the most other blogs and books and things like that um and these resources they talk about all the different types of work you can do methods um how you can apply theory different roles that you can be in and lots of other things but what I'll be focusing on for the rest of the presentation is um what we bring to the table in terms of um a few different things perspective approach skills and tools and then I'll talk about some project examples to Showcase um the breadth of the kind of work that you can do so when I say perspective um and anthropological perspective these are some of the things that come to mind for me um looking at things holistically having empathy for others um in being able to interpret um cultural or social perspective um across cultural perspective or comparing um being people centered having an both an inside inser and Outsider perspective at the same time I think that's one of our key attributes is you know we go to work at an organization we're technically an Insider because we work there but we're we kind of always at least for me personally and probably many other anthropologists we maintain an outsider perspective at the same time because that's what our training has um provided us having a healthy skepticism when it comes to decisions um perspectives um just you know asking questions and making sure you get to the root of things being detail oriented uh oriented towards process oriented towards um getting results at least from an applied anthropology U perspective when working on projects being open-minded um wanting to be value added so joining a team or joining a project and wanting to bring the value of anthropology to that project um also a contextual perspective so looking at the context in which things exist not just looking at things things in and of themselves of course curiosity um I think every Anthropologist is curious um and also we bring um a set of Ethics um which stem in part from the different organizations that we may or may not belong to American anthropological Association Society for appied anthropology um and then also just developing our own um ethical perspectives as we go along so next um is approach the anthropological approach um so the things that I think of when I think of our what's unique about our approach um is it's critical so asking questions um not taking things for face value iterative um going uh solving problems and um asking questions in an iterative cycle uh you you I'm trying to think of an example for that so basically iteration means you um do things over and over until you get to the right Point um you test out a hypothesis until you find the answer for example um you have a design you do some research on it um you improve that design and then you throw it back out and get some more information on it creative um being creative in many different ways with our projects um being resourceful systematic so um when we're doing our work we don't kind of just make things up willy-nilly but we try to follow um a process um as much as we are able to um and follow systematic standards for doing things advocacy advocating um and this doesn't apply to all anthropologists but many of us um feel uh like we want to use our work to advocate for people again who may not um have a say in in decisions we have a very collaborative approach typically um at least that's um the way things um are typically done these days uh with a changing career landscape more people moving out of Academia uh working on teams participatory in the sense that uh we we value the participation um not just of experts and just anthropologists but people from other disciplines people in communities um and getting everyone's perspective involved multi method um in the sense that we don't just rely on one method for doing things we have a whole toolkit of um skills and tools and ways of doing things that we can rely on um so on the right column here inductive and deductive and these are essentially approaches to research that I won't get into too much detail but um there are two ways of doing things inductive is going into research without preconceived notions and letting the data that you find tell you um what you're seeing and coming up with Frameworks to describe it deductive is more like doing the opposite where you go in with a theory or a hypothesis about something um and you try to find information that either fits or negates that uh notion immersive we are um willing to immerse ourselves in cultures that are different from our own um and this is really important in going out into the Working World um and definitely very interesting in design and business uh I mentioned this before but we're we are very resourceful um with um you know tight timelines and budgets and things like that being able to still get good information engagement so engaging with others whether that's stakeholders community members um our colleagues at work making sure it's not just a lone wolf um approach anymore it's definitely a collaborative engaged one and three more here so problem solving um that's pretty self-explanatory but um you know using anthropology to solve problems uh systems thinking so looking at how things are interconnected how they're um related to one another within an organization um within a group of people that you're studying not just looking at things by themselves um and knowledge building um so we're interested not only in solving problems but building knowledge around the practice of our work so the last um set of Point here is about the skills and tools we have and um obviously anthropologists come out of school with um knowledge about anthropological Theory Concepts and research methods um but we also know about telling people stories um we have the skill of problem solving problems which I think I mentioned uh previously Rapport building so making connections with other people um making uh sure that they trust us um that's really important to do when you're um doing research learning we're always um willing to learn and we we know we have to learn in order to understand new domains and solve problems we're very observant um we know how to plan projects we know how to analyze things um with different Frameworks with different perspectives we're very good at listening to other people and understanding what they're telling us um managing managing projects and managing ourselves so um making sure we get things done um in a certain amount of time which there is a bit of a transition of course from school to the Working World in that regard but um you pick up on it pretty quickly digging deep into questions so not just accepting what we see in front of ourselves but digging a little bit deeper and asking why over and over again until we're satisfied with the answer uh related to analysis is pattern recognition um understanding and framing problems so understanding what the problem is that you're trying to solve um it may not be what you initially set out to solve or if you're working with a stakeholder in your company they might say I have this problem can you do some research and help me figure out what's going on or help me um find an answer and oftentimes um what they think the problem is is not actually um not actually the problem and not actually what you end up going out to research and then making sense of complexity people are very complex culture is very complex and so um anthropologists are trained to do that as well and this is one um thing that kind of relates to what I've been talking about is research methods and so I'm a ux researcher and this um th these methods should look fairly familiar to the most of the people who are watching um especially anthropologists or anthropology students uh you learn a lot of these things uh when you're in school but then designers um you people um would also recognize these things and this was the easiest way for me to connect my anthropology education and my job as a ux researcher um these methods for understanding uh The Human Experience and and how people again interact with design all right so I have a few project examples that I'm going to cover um and I want to preface by saying that again there's an infinite variety of work that you can do in user experience um and in design and business um so a lot of my work has been done for technology clients and different Industries and that's kind of just I think there's two things to that one is that's the direction I ended up going in it's very interesting uh and there are jobs in technology for this um kind of work and the other thing is that um well it relates to that which is that technology has pretty much been the leader in adopting user Center design and user experience approaches so it just kind of makes sense that most of the jobs would be there um I'm happy to um know though that um more and more organizations outside of technology and outside of business are um looking at user Center design and um I would definitely be interested in in working you know in a nonprofit or a government agency just as much um and so before I go into the examples um I I won't I'm not going to be able to go into the details of the projects just because we don't have um a lot of time but again I'm happy to answer any questions um about the projects about the process I followed the methods the goals um my role in particular at the end or if anyone wants to get in touch all right so this first example um what I did here was um usability testing and interviews for the redesign of a um software that allows people to edit medical terminology and um I know that sounds kind of boring but what I really liked about this project was how complex it was um the software was only you is only used by I don't know 40 people in the entire world so it's really specialized it's really complex it was designed a million Years Ago by engineers and they kind of just did their best job at putting it together and finally the people um the client U decided that they wanted to make some changes so that was a really interesting project for me um I have a local wine shop nearby um that uh I worked with to understand the wine shop customer experience um and I actually did this through a survey um and that was that's I don't do a lot of surveys in my work most of my work work is um qualitative you know interviews um observational usability tests things like that um but this is definitely one way that you can get um information uh for Designing um or improving experiences um in retail with uh software Hardware whatever it might be this is actually a project from um back in grad school um the University of Memphis has a really great applied program where you get to do um an applied thesis or um they like to call it a practicum and so I did a couple projects for the urban child Institute which is a a nonprofit in Memphis and one of them included um an ethnographic study of uh the relationship between social capital and health another project I've done um in the automotive space was um and I can't go into really any detail about it unfort um but um we were essentially testing out a new prototype and doing some interviews with um vehicle owners in Shanghai China which was um one of the target markets for this particular plant um I've done I don't know how many just numerous um usability and ux research studies for lots of different um mobile and desktop Hardware um so many that I really um I I don't need to name any here but I've um had the fortune uh to work on lots of different devices phones tablets laptops two in on you name it um and related to that this is another Hardware project um I did a really interesting study on um styluses so digital styluses that you would use with um a mobile device or a computer um but particularly looking at um people who use it for productivity Art and Design uh this was a really fun one that I did in store where um I did kind of uh observational interviews and one-on-one interviews with people to learn about area rugs uh well the area rug shopping experience and I can't forget about my first job at State Farm um I don't have any photos or anything from that time but I got to do some really interesting projects there too um one of them was uh an ethnography in insurance agent offices in Oklahoma for a couple weeks that was really interesting um I worked to um help improve the work proc process of um people who worked in call centers um to not only improve their experience um as employees but also um the people who called into the call center um I definitely did a lot of work on the website and um mobile apps as well for um you know shopping for and purchasing different types of insurance um and also a couple projects for naming new products and I think this is one of the last ones um I did a couple years ago an exploratory study of Android developers um in three different countries um we were uh again this was very exploratory so we were just trying to understand this group of people um you know how they work how get things done what their goals are uh their challenges as Android developers um and uh so the the research for Germany um actually did remotely so I did um all remote interviews I was able to travel to China um hence all of the photos um and a colleague traveled to Brazil but it was a really interesting cross-cultural um project um on a very interesting topic all right and last but not least um spenell um is a healthcare startup that I was working at um until fairly recently um it was pretty much the best job I've ever had um in part because I had a really great team that I worked with um but also because uh the product U which is this website uh was really interesting it um basically allows people to shop for health services online um they can know the cost of their services up front there's nothing hidden um they can buy Services directly from providers and on the flip side provid ERS are able to list their services at the prices that they want um and get access to um people who will like there's no question as to whether or not they're going to pay their bill because they pay upfront so um company and um startup here in Portland but I did a lot of different um ux and usability studies for the site um and also studies looking into our the two uh user groups we had which were Healthcare Seekers and healthc care service providers all right so it's looking like we have about roughly 10 minutes left so I'll try to speed things up a little bit here um I uh so to close I'd like to talk about the things that have helped me along the way um because for most people going into user experience at least from anthropology um and going into design and business that's not a direct path um there's only a few schools that prepare students for this kind of work so I've pretty much had to figure things out for myself of course with the help of friends and colleagues and mentors and all of the resources that are out there um so I thought it would just be helpful for me to talk about um what has helped me along the way so learning skills that anthropology didn't teach me um there's definitely a lot of that involved uh when it comes to business and design um essentially immersing myself is much as I can at every opportunity within this field of work so I can learn more and meet meet more people collaborating with other roles like designers and developers and and business people um it just opens up a whole new world of um ideas and language and um ways to get things done um going to any kind of event related to ux and design that I'm able to uh you can take workshops and um again network with people understanding business culture and accepting it and those are different things and you can choose to do one or the other but um you know at first I I wasn't sure how I felt about business culture but then I just realized it's just another culture made up of other people and this is how things are done so I think taking that perspective really helps um has helped me work in this particular field adapting the methods and approaches that I've learned uh in school and that I've picked up along the way um being able to explain research um to non-researchers that's something I have to do pretty regularly especially now as a consultant where I'm trying to get new clients um many of them haven't worked with researchers before also learning to convince people to pay for research um that's you know there's there are opportunities out there um for research and and research jobs but a lot of the time you still have to convince people it's of value making sure my work is um actionable as they say the kind of a buzzword right now it just means providing information that other people um can take action on and that they can use getting as much uh variety and experience roles in Industries um as I'm able that has been very helpful being flexible and being okay with uncertainty because things things happen really quick in business but they also happen really slowly um if that makes sense and reminding myself that I'm not there to be an anthropologist I'm there to fill a business need a business hires me to solve their problem a business doesn't hire me to be an anthropologist um and that was kind of a tough thing to realize at first but it's definitely true and then letting go of what I think the ideal is for my projects um that you can never do the ideal you never have enough time you never have enough money so I uh letting go of that that is also helpful um and so I have a few to close I have a few myths that I think um come up sometimes for people when they think about being an anthropologist in business um working in companies and things like that or even just doing applied anthropology or um practicing anthropology so the first one is uh the first myth is applied anthropology isn't theoretical enough that's just not true um you can get as much Theory going on as you want um in applied anthropology or as little as you want another myth applied anthropology isn't intellectually stimulating I don't know I I I maybe my presentation has been able to convince you otherwise but I'm definitely um learning things every day and I'm being challenged every day and I just love it so um I would say that is not true academic anthropology is pure anthropology this is another myth um that unfortunately is still being perpetuated out there in um certain universities um that applied anthropology is some kind of impure or uh uh illegitimate form of doing anthropology that's just like oldfashioned and if anyone says that they're wrong all right so business there's some myths around business too um many anthropologists and especially anthropology students um including myself back then um I thought oh you know business it's evil corporations are evil and um I would be a Trader if I went to work in that field and I still hear people saying that and I just want to say none of these things are true it it depends on the perspective you take um you can choose to work for certain companies you can um avoid working for certain companies or people that you don't um that don't match your values and um it's just a personal decision myth number five is that you can't make any money doing anthropology that's definitely not true um there are lots of opportunities that could help you um live the lifestyle that you want but also you know pay your student loans and not have to scrape by and the last myth that I wanted to sell Florida doesn't need more anthropologists uh this is this is something that governor Scott Walker said um a couple of years ago and um not only is he wrong about Florida not needing more anthropologists but um you know the country in the world could use more anthropologists not just in business and design but in any field so to finish out here um I feel like uh this career path has afforded me the opportunity to do really meaningful work um and I've had to kind of you know figure out what that means to me and what opportunities would let me do that but I've been able to use my anthropology training um to solve challenging problems I get to be creative and work with technology work with really cool people I get to have an a direct impact with my work um to help design things that are awesome um and valuable and that meet real needs and solve real problems again this is a big one for me I get to advocate for people and convince others that they need to listen um and value different perspectives and I get to help businesses succeed in a competitive world so I um encourage any students who are listening to explore a career path like this one um and user experience design and business um if there are any Professor uh professors listening um I encourage you to learn more about this field um and to talk to your students about it and if there's anyone in business or design listening um please consider hiring more anthropologists all right I think that is it okay well thank you Amy that was a terrific presentation and we will open the floor now to uh questions if you would like to uh if you're in the audience and you would like to put your questions uh into the feedbox feedback uh or the question and answer box there we can go ahead and get those to Amy and try to um uh have her answer them so do you want me to check the box and answer whatever questions come in or do you want to let me know what questions come in or how do you want to do it uh can you see the Box um yeah let me get out of my presentation okay yeah if you can see the box you can just go ahead and take the questions there okay and do we have a time limit can we go a few minutes over uh we could go as long as you would like to as long as you're willing to go and folks can sign off when they're no longer able to be with us sure okay okay let's see um so there's a question from Lori uh there are clearly a number of reasons to use the phase these are centered design rather than human centered design would you please share your reasons for using this term and is the term proprietary no um those are I mean those are essentially interchangeable and I might have and likely did use both of them during the presentation and I think of them as the same um I like human centered design um because it's about humans people Center design design um user centered design is fairly common though in user experience because we we talk about users a lot um and some people don't like the word user some people don't care some uh some people they don't think about it um I kind of go back and forth I try to use people um for the most part but I use user and just um try to you know explain what I mean if that's necessary so like I said I think those are interchangeable um all right Kyle asks how did you build and structure your portfolio given your anthro background seems like many of the website portfolios I've seen lean heavily on graphic design and web programming skills and deemphasize research that is an awesome question um so I do have a portfolio on my site and I realized very quickly that if I wanted to be able to get jobs I needed to show people uh I needed to visually show people and tell people about my work um and essential a research portfolio is based on um projects and case studies um and process the research process that's what people are most interested in and it's definitely helpful if you can visualize things put pictures um you don't have to be an amazing visual designer but um you you tend to pick up on some of those skills and the uh and you start to Value visual design more anyway um because a lot of the people you work with are designers um and so that kind of just happens naturally I think if you if you take this career path um and then there was a followup question about um portfolio samples and and how long and in depth they should be um if it's on your website they shouldn't be very in-depth they should just be kind of the basics um you can look at mine for an example but there's you know just a few photos and a description of what the problem was um the process that I took and what the results were that sort of thing and then if you're doing an interview you can go into more detail oh shoot it's not Scott Walker who is the governor of Florida I think Scott Rick Scott Yes Rick Scott I'm well I don't really like Scott Walker either but um that's beside the point um Republicans all kind of look like huh yeah Rick Scott I I seem to confuse them um you know uh all the time actually um and thank you Kathleen for mentioning that okay so let's see um Kyle I see other questions that I want to get to other people so um email me with your other questions if you want um Michael can you expand on your approach as a solo practitioner to convincing people to pay for research um that could be a really long response but I guess what I'll focus on is you have to know what the value of research is to companies um it helps to have examples of companies or products that were made more successful with research um you need you basically need to know you need to sound like what that you need to sound like you know what you're talking about um you need to speak the language of your clients of your stakeholders within your company you have to understand what their problems are and um how you are you have to present a plan for how you're going to solve those problems with research so again I could go on and on about that and if you want to contact me later you can um let's see Rosalyn says um she's been looking into user experience jobs and they often seem to require coding technical engineering background no uh yeah it depends on the user experience job so um user experience encompasses a lot of different things you can be um a designer you can be different types of designers visual design interaction design motion design you can um you can be an information architect a Content strategist a researcher like myself um and then there's some people who do all of those things it just depends on the background that you come from so I would say to uh focus on your skill set and the things that you know how to do already and to shape your own ux career path um and then you know go to school and and read about the things that you don't know how as you you don't necessarily need coding um or you know develop developing experience though you it could be helpful if you do let's see there's quite a few more questions so I'm just going to keep going please do thank you thank you Amy okay sure let's see Riley Nolan um says can you talk about how training might be improved based on your experience um that's a pretty big and Broad question as well um I think it helps to I mean it was helpful for me to go to an applied program um because we talked about applying anthropology to solving problems specifically um the difference for me was that my program didn't have the uh domain or field that I ended up working in and that's not the fault of my program it's just that I discovered it later on so um in terms of improving training I think uh the most important things could be for programs to uh make sure students get um Hands-On class-based or outside the classroom experience uh with doing whatever type of work they're interested in it could be business and design or it could be Healthcare or whatever it might be I think that was a very helpful aspect of the University of Memphis program um being able to do Hands-On projects um learning how to communicate information to people outside of Academia and outside of anthropology so it's not just about writing papers and it's not just about um you know doing bullet point presentations there's so many other ways that you can communicate information to people and I think that's um something that uh training programs could provide a little bit more is what are those other methods part of that is going to involve um anthropologists and professors also learning those things um which they may or may not um you know being in Academia you do in a certain way it doesn't mean that your students are going to um do things in that way though so I would say that applies to any approach that a a program takes to teaching students think about what is going to be useful for them um and most of them are not going to end up in Academia I guess that's the the key thing um let's see Sarah how did you make the transition from working for business to Consulting well even though user experience jobs are increasing um certain markets don't have as many jobs so like the Bay Area San Francisco New York and other places um there's tons and tons of jobs um but here in Portland it's not as mature of a market and so um there are fewer companies with full-time roles and um the reason I left my last job is was because of a layoff um and so when I was looking for a new job there just weren't any and I decided Well I need to make money I need to keep getting experience I'm just going to try this Consulting thing out and it's um so that was kind of the impetus of making that decision um and I definitely would consider working within an organization again it's a really rewarding thing to work with people every day and work towards building something um and you know the social aspect of course um but that's kind of the the reason why I went in that direction um let's see Sarah also asks what are some of the more tangible research techniques that you did not learn in anthropology but are key to your ux work um well the slide that I showed with the methods um I pretty much use all of those but there are some variations for example usability testing where you um have someone use a website an app a product um and you assign them Tas to do to understand if they're able to complete them what um if they struggle uh if they get frustrated and want to quit um and and kind of evaluate your your product from that perspective so that is not something I learned in anthropology training but um I was able to at least apply um approaches like interviews and probing you know asking proving questions and things like that that's helpful in usability testing but that that would be an example for you user let's see how Okay Lance asks how do I give myself experience Andor scholarly background to apply for both applied anthropology jobs in the private sector and Academia well I would say I mean if I if it were me I would try to decide between one or the other because it's it it can be hard to be in both places now that said there are people who um are professors and they also consult for private sector clients um there are also companies um out there for example Intel which is um here in the Portland area they employ a lot of anthropologists with phds who came from Academia um and their practice of anthropology and their role within that company is very reflective of that so I I I think maybe you could look into it into doing it in that way but you could also just decide between one or the other and see how it goes uh let's [Music] see what were so Stephen asked what were some of the challenges you faced applying for jobs when you were making the transition from a market research role to a ux role well um I think the main challenge was that I didn't have a ton of quote unquote ux or you know usability experience I was able to get on some projects like that at State Farm just accidentally or maybe it was because they knew I had a qualitative research skill set and so you know that's very applicable to those so I kind of just fell into that and was able to um say hey I have some experience but you know the role I went into um it wasn't it was fairly entry level still um um you know I had a year and a half of experience um before I got my first official ux role so um The Experience helps and being able to draw parallels and draw lines between your skill set that you're trained in any experience you have and user experience and one thing I will say is I know tons of people who go into user experience and they don't have a ux background there's there aren't really very many if any degrees and user experience so my a couple um there are other degrees that are very applicable like user centered design or human computer interaction or other things but people come from all different disciplines so I guess my point is that there are lots of people trying to just make their way into ux and there are lots of people who are open to accepting those folks who may not have ux experience but who have applicable skill set Claire asks about my about participant recruiting and my relationships with participants in different projects um I'm not exactly sure what the question is asking but I think I'll take a stab at it so when you're recruiting participants for projects Ty you work with a firm that helps you to recruit those people some people do it themselves and you can do it through social media you know friends and family um which I don't always suggest uh there's lots of methods for you to do it yourself but oftentimes um and hopefully you have a you have it in your budget to pay a firm that specializes in recruiting to get people for you and you pay them um and I like to pay people a good amount of money um because I'm you know getting valuable information from them and I'm using their time and they're sharing their time with me so um I'm not really sure what else to say about recruiting um I think the other thing I can add is um we well I always use consent forms um so people consent to participate in my research um uh and um also non-disclosure forms if I'm working on a prototype or something that isn't um you know out in the public yet so there's uh lots of different processes but I would say too that there's different companies have a different approach to doing that sort of thing so I've picked up on a lot of different ways and have developed my own um that I like to follow let's see um usma um says great presentation and the director of meetings for tripa and growing our meeting more to attract practicing anthropologists is a goal of mine is there anything else that we can provide at our meetings that would help attract the practicing folks yeah um I think one of the biggest things for me is that I can I can't afford to go to a lot of conferences um compan depends on where you work but some companies don't have the budget for that um and personally I end up paying a lot out of pocket for that um so I don't know I mean money should go to really important things like getting students to conferences and um people from different countries and all that stuff but I don't know maybe there could be some kind of funds um definitely more sessions that are about applied work um I know there are more of those but the more the better uh workshops learning skills that's another way I decide about attending conferences is um if I go to a conference am I going to be able to learn things and not just sit in paper sessions and have people read papers but like is it a workshop is it interactive am I going to learn a new skill um or networking opportunities I think um that's another um thing that I look for is a ways to meet people um the thing about AAA is that um it's it's a very Broad conference um so for me right now in my career I'm looking more for very specific conferences um and epic which is um part uh which came out of um you know anthropology and the triaa um is a good example of an anthropology conference that um has a very specific focus of doing ethnography in business and Design there are a lot of questions here so I'm kind of just picking um a few and um I think I'll be able to go for a few minutes more um but there there are quite a bit so again if I if I don't answer your question um my apologies please feel free to email me or um call me or get in touch in any way and I'll be happy to answer your question so Deborah um she's a professor and she says that she's interested in learning more so she can open this up to her students um and maybe even get into it herself so is it possible to enter straight from Academia and how would you suggest doing that like I mentioned um earlier there are companies that are more um open to people who have very good academic credentials and are very knowledgeable about particular areas or um you know have a lot of academic experience doing projects and research but um so so that's one opportunity and there are folks that I meet from time to time who want to go from Academia to um practicing in business design user experience whatever it might be um and I think it's it's just kind of the same thing that I talked about earlier which is understanding how your skills and your perspective fits into the kind of work you want to do and um you know being able to say hey yeah this was an academic project I did it in Academia um however I see the applied value of it or here's what we learned um here's the process that I took and the methods and the constraints that I dealt with and just try to communicate those things um that you did and that you learned um in terms of what someone in a business or other organization would care about and um you know typically if you can do that and you're passionate and um really interested in going into that field um people people are pretty open to um taking folks Like You on Rema um says that she majored in cultural anthropology and has mainly worked in policy research and is interested in switching to ux and she asked would you recommend someone to pursue an internship in ux before pursuing a full-time job if you can get an internship um well okay let me back up so internships is a controversial topic um of course and um you know if you can get a regular job first then get the regular then take the regular job like I was just saying um people from all different disciplines and all experience levels go into U all the time um and that's a great the great thing about it um of course there are other positions that require a lot of experience um with design and and all of that so um I would say if you can get the regular job first great if you can't um try to find an internship that will pay you and really um value your experience and your um knowledge and not just kind of see you as a person to do the mundane tasks but you know a place where you'll be able to get real world experience um so yeah if if that um your only option then that's definitely not a bad thing um Chris asks about um examples of how my work impacted a design change and yeah I have tons of those you can go to my website and look at the case studies or you can email me and I can tell you about some specific examples um Deborah is asking about how much of the work I do is collaborative um in terms of developing research design yeah um some projects I'm the only researcher and some Pro and like you know I'm working by myself and doing every every aspect of the project um other projects I work on a team of researchers we split up the tasks of you know designing the research collaboratively um recruiting people working with the clients um I've also like back at spenell um my the team that I worked with of designers um and developers were really great because they wanted to be in on the research they not only did they value the results of the research for their work but they also participated in um creating the research design you know what questions are we asked what things are we going to show to people to get feedback back um coming up with ideas based on the results um and that sort of thing so it really just depends on the um context of where I'm working and uh you know who else I'm working with okay a bunch of people have asked about pay and I've skipped that um until now because people keep asking about it so I can't I don't want to give like specific numbers because it really depends on so many things um it depends on your experience and um how convincing you are you know um to tell someone to give you more money um it depends on so many different variables but I would say that um you working in technology design business and working specifically in a user experience role um you are able to make make good money um you should because if you think about it you're providing really valuable information to organizations to give them more success so um it's it's valuable and you should be um paid as such um and so I don't really know what else to say about it um if anyone has other very you know more specific questions about rates and salaries and things like that I'm happy to answer those offline well thank you that was really awesome I wonder as maybe one final question if you um had any recommendations that you'd want to make about different graduate programs that might uh specialize can can you say that the last part one more time I couldn't hear you sure I I wonder if uh you had any recommendations about graduate programs that might be particularly good for folks who want to check out uh training in uh in in this field this sub field of anthropology sure so actually if you go to there's a book it's called the handbook of anthropology and business uh it's by ritaa Denny and Patricia Sunderland they were the editors of this volume um it's a really awesome big book full of um chapters about doing this kind of work there is an art there's a chapter in here um and I'm looking for it right now it is um well I'm not going to spend too much time for it but there's a chapter in here that talks about all of the different um programs that uh prepare students for this kind of work and off the top of my head and I'm sorry if I leave any out but off the top of my head are University of North Texas uh which has not only an in-person master's degree where you can focus on business and design and anthropology but they also have an online program um let's see what else uh Wayne State University um I have some colleagues who went there um and they have that particular focus at that place and um I can't remember any of the others but there are a few so um check out that chapter in that book and if you don't have the book or can't access it then I can um look in there and let you know personally could you maybe repeat the name of that book just for those of us who didn't quite get to write it down the book is um Handbook of anthropology and business uh it just came out in 2014 I believe and it's aita Denny and Patricia Sunderland they are well-known names in business anthropology and have other books and articles as well but there's a book uh there's a chapter in there that talks about um training programs specifically all right terrific well once again I really appreciate your uh you're taking the time to do this webinar today um our next webinar is going to be scheduled for uh March 23rd with Katie hind um and we will for so many people who ask we will uh attempt to have this online uh on our webinar homepage at www.american an.org um we'll try to get it up within the week or so um as soon as I can get to it um and again thank you everyone who participated today and thank you especially Amy uh for this fabulous presentation and um we'll call call it a day then I think thank you all right thanks everyone thanks Veron okay bye bye bye bye