Laura Schroeder

Perspectives

“Every project is an opportunity to advocate for spatial justice and equitable design” – a conversation with Paola Aguirre Serrano

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Paola Aguirre Serrano Q&A graphic
We can't wait to welcome Paola Aguirre Serrano, EPIC2023 keynote speaker, and hear her talk "Designing With: Collaboration Frameworks for Spatial Justice & Equitable Design." To get ready to engage with this crucial topic, we talked with Paola about the challenges and rewards of multidisciplinary work, ethnographic perspectives and practices that have been important to her, how she thinks about friction, and what she's most looking forward to at EPIC2023. You’re the founder of Borderless Studio, an urban design and research studio focused on approaches and collaboration frameworks addressing spatial justice and equitable design while cultivating collaborative design agency. What do borders and the concept of “borderless” mean to you? Borderless for me is a practice of resistance against fragmentation, silos and compartmentalized perspectives. Borderless is an invitation to collaborate, grounded in values of openness, civicness and publicness – and to use design as a tool to practice generosity, empathy and service...

Intelligences

Friction in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives

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Friction in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiatives, by Shakima Jackson Martinez, AnswerLab
by SHAKIMA JACKSON-MARTINEZ, https://vimeo.com/802919294 Shakima Jackson-Martinez describes the friction DEI initiatives face when people and organizations resist change. But friction can also be healthy if we lean into difference: "In our search for optimization, we rely on familiarity... Whose perspective is missing from this conversation? And who, if given an opportunity to be here, can help us rise to the occasion and build better products, services, teams, and organizations? ...We need difference to thrive." Shakima Jackson-Martinez is a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Advocate who specializes in foundational DE&I practices, inclusive talent acquisition, and building organizational empathy through internal research. She is currently the Senior Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at AnswerLab, a full-service UX Research firm, where she leads the DE&I and talent acquisition functions. Shakima has over 15 years of corporate experience in Human Resources, Project Management, Strategy, and Operations. She is...

Courses

Ethnographic Interviewing: Mastering the Essential Qualitative Method

Ethnographic Interviewing Course

This course offers a thorough foundation in ethnographic interviewing—all the way from principles and project briefs to analysis—and the skills, wisdom, and practice you need to create powerful insights in diverse contexts. → SOLD OUT! JOIN THE WAITLIST BELOW. INSTRUCTOR: Michael Powell, PhD SCHEDULE: 7 online sessions are Fridays, August 18–October 6, 9–10:30 am Pacific…

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Talks

Revamp and Reinvent your Career with the Power of Creativity (now on video)

Kaul Talk June 21

June 21, 2023, 12:30–1:30pm US Pacific Time Free for EPIC Members Presented by CAMILA KAUL, Founder, Just a Squiggle [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] [s2If !current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] To watch the recording of this session, please JOIN EPIC or LOG IN [/s2If] A creative workshop to help you think differently about your career and give yourself the chance to…

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News

EPIC Celebrates Departing Board Members, Welcomes New Members

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Images of incoming and outgoing EPIC Board members in Spring 2023

Please join us in thanking Martha Cotton and Carol Zatorre for their service and welcoming Samantha Gottlieb and Shriram Venkatraman to the EPIC Board of Directors. The EPIC Board exists to define the long-term direction of the organization and its activities. It also provides counsel to the hard-working executive team who deliver the activities and initiatives…

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Perspectives

Ethnography, Ethics & Time

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Japanese panel painting
  "Ethnographers flit forwards and backwards all the time as we create research objectives, wonder whether what we learnt yesterday is really the full story, and create and debate theories." Ethnographers are not time travelers, but we may be close. Our frameworks and methodologies develop a nuanced understanding of how relationships, processes, and objects evolve over time. This 'temporal expertise' is key to enacting our ethical responsibility to the past and future, says anthropologist Dr. Oliver Pattenden, who will explore these themes in his upcoming EPIC Talk on April 25, 2023: From Complex Histories to Possible Futures: Ethical Practice Across Time. In this Q&A, he discusses the intersection of ethnography, ethics, and time; how to encourage organizations to focus on ethics as a core component of decision-making, and what he's learned from his three-year-old son lately. We hope you enjoy this rich conversation! When people think about ethics, time probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. What inspired...

Talks

Talking to Stakeholders (now on video)

EPIC Talk Promotion - Talking to Stakeholders

June 8, 2023, 8–9:30am US Pacific Time / 5–6:30pm CEST Free for EPIC Members [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] [s2If !current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] To watch the recording of this session, please JOIN EPIC or LOG IN [/s2If] Presenting research is more than delivering analyzed data. The value of our work as ethnographers in industry is limited by whether or…

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Talks

From Complex Histories to Possible Futures: Ethical Practice across Time

Promotion for Oliver Pattenden Talk

A workshop-style session applying ‘temporal concepts’ to make our work more ethical and effective. April 25, 2023, 8–9:30am US Pacific Time / 5–6:30pm CEST Free for EPIC Members [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] [s2If !current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] To watch the recording of this session, please JOIN EPIC or LOG IN [/s2If] Thanks to changemakers and activists, many organizations are…

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Perspectives

How Can the Job Search Suck Less? Use Ethnography, Community & Reflexivity in Career Transitions

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Photo of the "Golden Bridge" in Da Nang, Vietnam: A yellow-hued bridge is supported by two gigantic hands
"What exacerbates the pain of the job search is how simplistically we define community.... What if we always felt supported by and useful to others, whether in a job or not?" Ethnographers are pathmakers by nature...but navigating the job market and other work transitions can be grueling and isolating. How can design and ethnographic methods, community building, and personal practices help sustain us? EPIC member, design researcher, and career coach Sarah Malin has some strategies to share with you: she's co-facilitating our next Career Pathmaking Meetup on April 4: Job Search Resilience: A Career Support Event for Ethnographers, Researchers, and Strategists. In anticipation, we chatted with Sarah about how to make the job search less soul-sucking, how ethnography informs her work, and the power of a good question. For many, searching for a job can be isolating, draining, and demoralizing. What is the role of community in the job search process? How can we make it more human—and community—centered? I think what exacerbates the pain...

Perspectives

Art & Imagination in Online Qualitative Research: A New Tool for Brand Listening

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Abstract drawing of a city in shades of blue
How can we engage improvisation and imagination in digital research? By PETER SPEAR, Spear At the beginning of the pandemic, I was pretty sure I was done. I had been a qualitative researcher and brand consultant for 25 years. I had spent the past decade building my practice around an approach that centered contextual and imaginative face-to-face research. I called it brand listening, and it combined ethnographic interviews and free association and projective techniques. In a 2019 project for Tom Brady’s fitness brand TB12, I tagged along with people as they went to the gym, to a stretching session, even a pole dancing studio. I will never forget what Michael showed me about the burden of masculinity, when he confessed to me he would only do yoga at home, out of embarrassment. Or what Lisa showed me about belonging, when she talked about her “pole sisters.” Working for the mattress brand Leesa Sleep in 2018, I was welcomed into people’s homes and bedrooms to explore rituals and routines around sleep. The ability to connect...