It looks to be a busy time between now and the end of the year, with a lot of exciting opportunities. Some details still TBD; I’ll update with links when we get ’em. Meanwhile, if you’re going to be at any of these presentations, please let me know!

• An Introduction to User Research – CCA’s Design MBA Program – San Francisco, August 27
• Moving from Data to Insights to Opportunities – EPIC 2009 – Chicago, Sep. 1
• Understanding Cultural Context – IxDA Chicago @ DePaul University – Sep. 1 (RSVP here)
• “Yes, and” for Better Design/Design Research – IDSA Project Infusion – Miami, Sep. 24
• We’ve Done All This Research: Now What? – Nokia Design Speaker Series – Sep. 30
• Reading Ahead: Considering The Book’s Future in the iPod Era – UC Berkeley Center for New Media and School of Information – Sep. 30
• Design Research Workshop – Istanbul Technical University, Department of Industrial Product Design – Nov. 5
• Tasarƒ±ma ƒ?lham ve Veri Saƒülamak ƒ??ßin Etnografik Ara?ütƒ±rma (Ethnographic Research for Inspiring and Informing Design) – International Istanbul Industrial Design Summit – Nov. 6-7
• Guest lecture in Chris Fahey’s Interaction Design Fundamentals – School of Visual Arts MFA in Interaction Design – New York, Nov. 16
• We’ve Done All This Research: Now What? – Web 2.0 Expo – New York, Nov. 17
• Yes, My Iguana Loves to Cha-Cha: Improv, Creativity and Collaboration – IxDA NYC (SOLD OUT!) – New York, Nov. 19
• Design Research Presentation – Pratt Institute – New York, Nov. 19
• Getting Generative: User Research Applied to Business Decisions – School of Visual Arts – New York, Nov. 20

• Sherry Turkle is Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT and a sociologist. – She has focused her research on psychoanalysis and culture and on the psychology of people's relationship with technology, especially computer technology and computer addiction.
• apophenia – danah boyd's blog – danah boyd is a researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
• Michael Wesch's IA Summit 09 Keynote – Even though the presentation itself uses a lot of visuals and YouTube examples, I found the podcast to be extremely interesting and provocative. Wesch takes many examples of Internet and social media culture that we're familiar with but wraps them together to create a new and exciting story about the kinds of new things that technology is enabling. While I might have thought I knew it all already via danah boyd and Sherry Turkle, I learned a lot (that's not to say that boyd and Turkle haven't covered this material, I have no idea; but for me this podcast was a huge leap forward in my grokking of the issues).

• UK teen sex education pamphlet emphasizes sex sex as healthy and pleasurable rather than warning about disease – "Health officials are trying to change the tone of sex education. The new pamphlet, called "Pleasure," has sparked some opposition from those who believe it encourages promiscuity among teens in a country that already has high rates of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases."

  Regardless of what you think of this morally, politically, etc., it's a powerful example of reframing a discussion and challenging closely-held beliefs in order to innovate.

• Slides and audio posted for “Well, we did all this research … now what?” at BayCHI – BayCHI has relaunched podcasts and my recent BayCHI talk is among the first to be posted. You can listen to the audio, or you can watch the slides with embedded audio."Steve Portigal introduces a framework for synthesizing raw data into insights, and then creatively using those insights to develop a range of business concepts that respond to those insights and integrate a fresh, contextual understanding of a customer's unmet needs."

In addition to the summary posted last week, BayCHI has now posted the presentation from my recent talk, “We did all this research … now what?”

Audio

• In Recession, Strategy Shifts for Retail – It's hard to parse this piece; it's about a lot of cost-cutting stuff that is happening in retail but the tone suggests that these are innovative ways for companies to be more responsive (better customer service? better localization of products?) and integrated (linking the in-store and online experiences?). I'm skeptical and don't believe the concluding statement that this is happening because we're not spending in stores like we used to, it's too close to the whole "innovate your way out of a recession" talk and I don't think retail is an adaptable industry to take on a frame shift like that.
• An evolutionary perspective on what we display to others with our consumption (not clear how there's anything new here, though) – Instead of running focus groups and spinning theories,marketers could learn more by administering scientifically calibrated tests of intelligence and personality traits. If marketers understood biologists’ new calculations about animals’ “costly signaling,” they’d see that Harvard diplomas and iPhones send the same kind of signal as the ornate tail of a peacock.

  Sometimes the message is as simple as “I’ve got resources to burn,” the classic conspicuous waste demonstrated by the energy expended to lift a peacock’s tail or the fuel guzzled by a Hummer. But brand-name products aren’t just about flaunting transient wealth. The audience for our signals care more about the permanent traits measured in tests of intelligence and personality, as Dr. Miller explains in his new book, “Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior.”

• LA Times runs front-page ad that resembles a news item – [Nice unpacking of a concern I explored in my recent interactions column, Interacting With Advertising (ask us for a copy)]
  There was no intent to fool readers, Mr. Stotsky said. He said the ad used fonts that differed from the standard Los Angeles Times fonts, and it included the NBC logo. NBC staff wrote the ad, and The Times’s business staff approved it; the editorial side was not involved, he said. “I think most consumers will recognize that this is an ad,” Mr. Stotsky said.

  Whether readers knew this was advertising or not was beside the point, said Geneva Overholser, director of the school of journalism at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication.

  “Some people say readers are smart and they can tell the difference, but the fundamental concept here is deeply offensive,” she said. “Readers don’t want to be fooled, they don’t like the notion that someone is attempting to deceive them.”

• Another Los Angeles Times Promotion Draws Fire – (again, an issue I explored in my recent interactions column, Interacting with Advertising)

  “You dress an ad up to look like editorial content precisely because you think it will make it more valuable,” said Geneva Overholser, director of the school of journalism at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication. “Fundamentally, that’s an act of deception.”

  The supplement is clearly marked as an advertising supplement, said Nancy Sullivan, a Los Angeles Times spokeswoman. The bylines have “special advertising section writer,” and the font is different from the one the newspaper uses, she said.

I was recently in the UK to give the opening keynote at the Design Research Society’s Undisciplined conference. I detail some of my academic and professional history and talk about the concerns of a practitioner, perhaps an alternate take on what many in the audience (designers from academic settings) are thinking about themselves.

Here are slides and audio in separate widgets. You can start the audio and advance the slides manually to follow along. The talk goes for about 45 minutes and the discussion for another 25 or so.

< Audio [audio src="StevePortigal_DRS2008.mp3"] Also, see my London and Sheffield pictures here.

Less than a year after my last trip to London, I’m headed back to the UK – to Sheffield – to give the opening keynote at DRS2008 (Design Research Society conference), offering my perspectives on disciplinarity and rigour. If you’re attending the conference, drop me a note so I’ll know to look for you.

I’m also bookending the time in Sheffield with a few days in London before and after. It’d be great to meet up with firms and folks interested in culture, design, and innovation (etc.). I could probably throw together a little presentation or discussion starter for your team. Get in touch if you’d like me to stop by.

Steve in Trafalgar Square, 1990, photo by Richard Wintle

Steve in Trafalgar Square, 2007, photo by Avi Soudack

See more pictures from my London trip in 2007 here

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Here’s the presentation from last week’s IDSA/ICSID conference.

Audio

We spent about 1/3 of the time doing improv games (which may be “you had to be there”) and about 1/3 in discussion (in which the audio favors me over the audience), but maybe you can skip past some of those parts.

If you are coming to ICSID/IDSA Connecting 07 in San Francisco later this month, I’ll be giving a presentation entitled Connecting the Play of Improv with the Work of Ethnographic Research

on Friday, October 19, from 5:45pm – 6:30pm in the Fairmont Hotel, Crystal Room.

In the meantime, you can read more about an earlier version of this presentation

To the rest of us in the audience, both exercises were quite funny. Most of the participants couldn’t figure out at the time what we were laughing at.

All of which suggests that Improv is a powerful means of engaging with other human beings that is both immersive and “flow-like.”

Portigal then went on to define activities associated with ethnography, focusing on the guided interview process in particular.

He concluded his talk by identifying the key “overlaps” between the two disciplines:

* Balancing a “plan” with being in the moment
* “Yes and…” (Using positive reinforcement of the other’s statements to keep the conversation going.)

Dan Soltzberg and I will be attending the entire conference and we’d love to meet with folks to talk about how our work in uncovering user insights can help drive design and business decisions in your organization. Do let us know!