whim#12: UX Ethnography, history of the second amendment, sleepy ass syndrome, surfing, worm serial
At Pandera Labs, we dedicate our Wednesday morning stand-ups to sharing things that we’ve learned over the past week. We like to call it Whimsical Wednesday — Anything that piques one’s curiosity is fair game to share, the topics tend to span a plethora of categories. Here are a few highlights of what we were curious about this past week:
Zeke Franco recently attended EPIC2017 to gather and learn from fellow researchers. Epic is focused on industry applied Ethnography. Ethnography is a practice and set of methodologies to uncover the practices and customs of a group of people. The theme for conference this year was, perspectives. Which the conference framed as: “Perspectives explores the vantage points that both create and constrain our ethnographic practices. What comes of widening or narrowing scope? Shifting positions? Finding muses elsewhere? Forming hybridities? Subverting norms?”
I enjoyed especially enjoyed seeing people’s research outputs. There was a section dedicated to Films, that showcases multiple examples of how video was to better communicated user’s needs and foster empathy and ultimately action within the organizations who chartered the research.
The conference sessions will be available online, but require you to join the Epic community which has a membership fee of $150/yr.
sioked has been listening to RadioLab’s spin-off podcast called More Perfect and most recently heard an episode about the second amendment (Right to bear arms).
A couple interesting anecdotes from the podcast:
* The NRA was originally created after the Civil War by a correspondent for the NY Times and was inspired because the Union Army had an awful record for marksmanship — For every confederate soldier hit, 1,000 shots were required. The plan was to introduce clubs that would encourage individuals to practice shooting weapons so they could be more prepared if another war occurred in the future.
* The second amendment is surprisingly hard to understand due to some extra commas and the clause “A well-regulated Militia”. For most of the lifetime of the amendment, people assumed that it only applied to individuals that were members of a militia.
* For the first 200 years of the Amendment’s lifetime it was mostly untested and unused- it wasn’t until 2008 that a supreme court case enforced the right for all individuals to bear arms. That case did, however, uphold the idea that there are limits to that control.
Mark Moon was oblivious to the fact that he has a piriformis muscle, oblivious until last week that is. The piriformis muscle is located under the glutes and runs diagonally from the bottom of your spine to the top of the femur. This seemingly innocuous muscle plays an important part in running as it helps externally rotate the hip, stabilizes the pelvis, and keeps your hips level. Furthermore, for roughly 20% of the population, the sciatic nerve runs directly through his muscle. Mark learned this because he also learned Piriformis Syndrome is a thing.
Piriformis Syndrome is when the muscle spasms or becomes inflamed or tight from overuse. Additionally, Sleepy Glute Syndrome, also known as Dormant Butt Syndrome (partially caused by sitting too much), can compound the problem by causing the muscles in your rear to fire out of sync and compensate for weak glutes. Piriformis Syndrome symptoms include tenderness in the keester, pain when sitting, going up stairs, squatting, and numbness down the leg and into the foot. It really is a literal pain in the tookus.
Mark is continually amazed by the human body and the biomechanics of something seemingly so simple as running. Next up, how to treat Piriformis Syndrome.
Other interesting things
Ryan Redmann began reading the online serial Worm. He found the self-published, serialized approach to be a modern take on the Victorian-era serialization of novels a la Dickens. Ryan appreciated the subversion of modern super hero tropes and looks forward to finishing the novel.
Dean Michael Larbi is a big surf fan, so he was excited to hear that surfing will a Summer Olympic sport for the first time in history at the 2020 Tokyo event!
