My EPIC 2009 workshop Moving from Data to Insights to Opportunities is now open for registration. It takes place September 1 in Chicago.

One of the most persistent factors limiting the impact of ethnography in business is that research projects often stop with a cataloging findings and implications rather than generating opportunities that directly enable the findings. How can designers and researchers work with ethnographic data to create new things for business to do?

Participants in this workshop will learn an effective 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. While the framework includes a step to identify key filters that will ultimately prioritize across all generated concepts, the emphasis in this workshop will be to think as broadly as possible during ideation, truly strengthening the creative link between “data” and “action.” By the end of the workshop, participants will have developed a range of high-level concepts that respond to a business problem and integrate a fresh, contextual understanding of that problem.

This workshop is a lot of fun to lead and, as we’ve heard, fun and informative to participate in. Earlier this year it sold out at Interaction 09, and was enthusiastically received in its abbreviated format at San Francisco’s Interaction09 Redux and BayCHI.

Hope to see you there!

• San Francisco's Interaction09 Conference Redux – Last Saturday was a brief recap of the Interaction09 conference held recently in Vancouver. I led a workshop on transforming research data into insights and concepts. Here's a writeup of the whole event.

• IxDA SF presents Interaction09 Redux – Saturday, March 14th – I'll be leading a condensed version of my IXDA workshop from Vancouver (Well we did all this research…now what), looking at a framework for transforming questions into answers, answers into insights, and insights into actions.
• Steve's photos from Vancouver, Feb 2009 – I was in Vancouver to run a workshop at the IXDA conference and to visit family. Some of the photos will make their way into dedicated blog posts but meanwhile here's the whole set.
• Juice is in the details – Tropicana's redesign is being heralded for the caps that look like oranges. We've got a carton in the fridge and it's as plain as plain can be, so I'm not sure where these great caps are lurking. Meanwhile, back in 2006 we were seeing orange-looking caps on Florida's Natural packaging.
• Tropicana reverts to "classic" packaging after their crappy redesign is met with broad scorn – Mea pulpa: "Asked if he was chagrined that consumers rejected the changes he believed they wanted, Mr. Campbell replied: “I feel it’s the right thing to do, to innovate as a company. I wouldn’t want to stop innovating as a result of this. At the same time, if consumers are speaking, you have to listen.”"

My workshop at interaction ’09 (with the chatty title of Well, we did all this research – now what?) is almost sold out. It’s happening very soon, February 5, in Vancouver. I’m really looking forward to the workshop (attendees are already off doing their pre-conference homework assignment) and the conference and being in Vancouver as well.

Many designers and other people who “make stuff” agree that talking to people is essential at many points throughout the process. But even with that agreement it's not always clear what to do with the “data” that comes from those conversations.

Through exercises, examples, and discussion, Steve will share some best practices before going out in the field, while out in the field, and after being in the field that help transform questions into answers, answers into insights, and insights into actions.

If you’re interested in attending the workshop, you should sign up quickly for one of the last few spots. Hope to see you there!

Yesterday on KQED’s Forum their guest was Brooke Gladstone from On the Media. I was struck by this quote, early in the broadcast.

I will ask a question…maybe 5, 6 times, and the person we’re interviewing gets around to answering bits and pieces of it after every iteration and we will sometimes assemble all those answers into one.

This is the art of the interviewer — probing, following up, asking again, in order to get to the answer, eventually. It’s why interviewing in teams is tricky, because the other member of the team needs to know what’s in your head, to give you space to ask that question over and over again til you get to it. Regular people do not speak in soundbites.

We also see this over and over again when we’ve synthesized conclusions and we go look for supporting video data to share with our clients. It’s just not there as some obvious artifact. That’s why, of course, our recommendations come from synthesis — insights are not sitting there waiting to simply be scooped up, they have to be assembled from a variety of sources.

I am envious of those with amazing audio/video editing chops who can use the data to more closely approximate what we want to say; but at the end of the day, the big ideas rarely come out of people’s mouths directly.

One week from tonight is the first class in the Design Research Methods that course I’ll be teaching at the Involution Master Academy in Sunnyvale, CA. If you’re thinking of signing up, don’t wait!

I hope to see some of you there.

My latest podcast/broadcast is up at Core77, a conversation with Debbie Millman of Sterling Brands and the Design Matters radio talk show.

We talk about strategy, cultural anthropology, consulting, synthesis, and some other stuff as well. Check it out.

One of the interesting things about having a small business is the flexibility in how we can work. Our business model is based around a certain type of engagement: typically 6 to 8 weeks of half to 3/4 time, working directly with medium to large number-sized client team. But many other things come up (i.e., two of our last few projects involved direct collaboration with another agency, who had the original client relationship). Sometimes these different ways of working don’t work out, sometimes they are non-starters (like the call I returned a few weeks ago in which my guy had to wrap up the call to claim his court time; had an idea for a new company “but we’re not doing it for money”, and despite my clarity that this wasn’t a fit, was told I would be hearing from the partner, who of course didn’t follow through), but overall, I like the possibility that others can construct (or suggest) scenarios beyond what I may have thought of.

Recently I had a fun and simple gig; spend a day with a team, helping them to synthesize some data; pulling out some key themes and putting some text to it. There was no proposal, no deliverable, it was just a day of thinking, talking, synthesizing, organizing, writing.

Of course, we’re all hoping that it turns into more, either more like that, or more bigger, but as a first step, it was pretty fun. Variety is one of the key benefits of working in a consultancy, and varying the structure of the engagement is one source that I am always learning more about.