Week 3 Reflection

The readings from this week highlight the importance of going out into the field and experiencing first-hand what your targeted audiences are experiencing. For example, in the first chapter of the book “The Ten Faces of Innovation”, Kelley delves deeper into the role of anthropologists at Ideo. He cites several cases where different individuals were able to collect findings that otherwise would not have been found if it wasn’t for their abilities to read between the lines and ask the right questions. Kelley explains that it is very important as a researcher to practice the principle of “beginner’s mind” in order to rid themselves of potential biases and preconceived assumptions about the problem they are tackling. Additionally, it is equally as important to “[Never] come up for air until it is all over.” This means that the researcher must be able to engulf themselves in their daily lives of the individuals they are researching in order to fully capture all of the details. This is where technology and video recording come into play.

Cameras are very useful in capturing all of the details that otherwise would be missed during an interaction/interview. For instance, Kelley shares a case where Roshi Gvechi, an extreme anthropologist, stayed in a room with a patient for two days observing. With her, she had a video camera which continuously recorded what was happening in the room. A time-lapse of the 48- hour tape then fully painted a picture of what was happening and the different disturbances the patient experienced throughout the day. However, during the research process there are going to be times where it’s going to be impossible to follow people throughout their day. That is when a cultural probe is useful. A cultural probe is an item that is assigned to an individual with a prompt, or an instruction of when to use. This provides the researcher with objects of analysis that provide a deeper understanding of the person’s life (since the whole process helps them indirectly open up).

I also thought it was helpful to know that the perspectives of teens and children are invaluable during the research process since they generally have a different perspective of the world around them, as well as knowledge of generational trends that might not be obvious to the researcher.