Posts tagged “rhode island”

Body Self-Image

Photos from my various travels depicting global cultural variations of the fundamental person icon.

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Bali, Indonesia. They’re some pretty small people, so why does that first person seem so hulking and Cro-Magnon-y?

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Taipei, Taiwan. Note the hip chapeau the stroller is sporting, and the protective headgear (?) worn by the worker.

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London, UK. This fellow toils as above, but without the benefit of a helmet. Less chance of sunburn, maybe?

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Tokyo, Japan. The Japanese cute aesthetic shows up in the large head and even larger cigarette.

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Bangkok, Thailand. Who takes care of children?

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Providence, RI, USA. Not just walking, but actively moving forward, dancing, and exuding joie de vivre.

And Karrie Jacobs has a nice example here.

Seventeen ways to not suck at research


I spoke recently at Shift, the IDSA conference held at RISD. I outlined seventeen ways to not suck at research:

1. Quit worrying about jargon
2. Think more broadly about which people you want to learn about
3. Garbage in, garbage out
4. Give other people the space to tell their stories
5. Follow up, and then follow up, and then follow up
6. Do you really want to use a survey? Probably not.
7. Collect and use natural language
8. Don’t forget that any research process with real live humans is hard
9. Breathe their air
10. Learning anything new requires rapport, and building rapport takes time
11. Finding insights requires pattern matching, creativity, synthesis
12. Personas are user-centered bullshit
13. Phil McKinney says “You’re probably not listening.”
14. Practice noticing stuff and telling stories (updated: read more here)
15. Do some improv
16. Embrace pop culture
17. Don’t forget about culture and social norms

The presentation was very well received, and I hope to share this material with another group before too long.

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In Memoriam

In 2003, a nightclub fire in Rhode Island killed 100 people. I recently visited the site of the club, now a somewhat makeshift memorial.

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There were several of these, enough to prompt a web search. One can buy the same stone here.

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The pictures now strike me as interesting, but experience of visiting was very touching, very moving. There’s a lot of detail everywhere, something that even a whole pile of pictures don’t capture. Each of those details evokes a pungent sense of loss and pain.

You can see all my photos from the site here.

Also, see IN LOVING MEMORY: Artifacts of Remembrance, by RISD grad student (or recent graduate) Chelsea Green. The site “investigates commemoration with the intention to create artifacts + experiences of remembrance that support healing.”

On Every Street

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Old and run-down business goes away, omnipresent Dunkin Donuts comes in. One shouldn’t infer timing, nor cause-and-effect, of course. But perhaps signs of the times?

Meanwhile, a recent post on Bostonist maps out the density of DD in nearby Boston.

I figured I’d be eating some donuts on that trip, but I did not. I was quite excited to see a Tim Horton’s (a rare sighting in the US, especially away from a Canadian border) and ran in to get a butter tart (a dessert fave). Yum!

Series

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