A very inspiring beginning of the afternoon today in London.
It's exactly 14.12pm, that's two minutes before the average Londoner feels the deepest-down moment of the after-lunch bacchanal - siesta!
The sun is out there and the outside temperature is a mild 13C (56F) with bright and clear skies. Spring beckoned about 4 weeks ago now.
Rocky sounds waves arrive from Spotify this time, #MySpotifyPlayList.
My window-opening habits in the virtual space go along too with those triggered by the weather out there. Revisiting then what's left in this chunk of window-tabs, Susan Dray appears as a recently-added-human (RAH) to my G+ social media world. Click Susan above if so you wish, a new window will open keeping this one alive!
Susan's profile, despite she is already known to me as an author within the CHI, HCI and UCD communities (to mention but a few), has come back to me due to a sad encounter with life in this my new area of research and discovery in life - HCI and all surrounding it, academia and other colleagues included. #ClickToRead how I came about Susan today through the figure of recently deceased Professor Gary Marsden of UCT.
Back to where life goes on and as if with a friendly alibi in mind, Susan's G+ profile and the contents in it, appear to me right when I am shaping the last touches of my own PhD project's design.
I have read several of Professor Dray's papers through the last seven months since my PhD research project begun. From the first instance, Dray has come about as an active advocate and expert practitioner of user-research, of the so-called "getting to know the user" for technological design.
For what I've read and do now see, no doubt Susan rocks out there, on paper and in-the-field!
Read Susan's Latest Adventures-In-The-Field, in Veraguas, Panamá!
Dray blogs away this very project through a set of orderly and lively descriptive blog posts filled-in with a richness that shows the researcher preparing and wearing all-detail to carry out research in-the-field and design implementation. This is gold at this stage in my own research and project interests, as it is to do with technology, happens in participation between facilitator and participants, in a non-western setting, and Dray have provided herself with a crew of local volunteers that help in carrying out the travelling and action involved in this project.
To add to the challenge, the facilitator, as she herself points out, does not speak the local language - Spanish. However it is noticeable how the experienced facilitator lack of languages skills alongside the lack of local area knowledge must be planned in advance, as they can easily become hurdles in environments where some of the work and tasks may lead the facilitator to geographical realms where the company and ultimate lead of a local makes the adventure to not be adventurous where it is best to hold control.
Dray illustrates in this post how to provide oneself with the daily needs of buying stone beads:
Stone Beads with not Stone Pain
By the look of the above and the project overall, it seems Dray has provided herself with a volunteer lot of collaborators that make the work easier and to quickly gain trust from participants when going to the rural areas where some of the work is undertaken.
Through her blog, Dray does visually show us around the environments where she and the local team are implementing their project. This by the same token becomes a precious piece of ethnographic and storytelling research that helps me in keeping defining my own research project with examples by established practitioners working across'cultures.
The ending of this post comes with both, the twit I sent this afternoon to Susan once I discovered on, and read about the project, and with a music radio station I rather enjoy - and that comes from those latitudes of the American continent - Casino Estereo.
TWITTER MESSAGE:
Precioso y muy visual su storytelling, Susan, qué bonito proyecto!
Triggering thoughts, mental visualisations and interesting & inspiring insights towards my own #PD projects with #Persona eliciting cultural factors in non-traditionally western settings - and how I envisage them. Thanks for your #Professionalism & #Experience!
Posted on 15/04/2014
by @UXGentleman
 |
| London, UK, sunny day: 15/04/2014 |
The sun is out there and the outside temperature is a mild 13C (56F) with bright and clear skies. Spring beckoned about 4 weeks ago now.
Rocky sounds waves arrive from Spotify this time, #MySpotifyPlayList.
My window-opening habits in the virtual space go along too with those triggered by the weather out there. Revisiting then what's left in this chunk of window-tabs, Susan Dray appears as a recently-added-human (RAH) to my G+ social media world. Click Susan above if so you wish, a new window will open keeping this one alive!
Susan's profile, despite she is already known to me as an author within the CHI, HCI and UCD communities (to mention but a few), has come back to me due to a sad encounter with life in this my new area of research and discovery in life - HCI and all surrounding it, academia and other colleagues included. #ClickToRead how I came about Susan today through the figure of recently deceased Professor Gary Marsden of UCT.
Back to where life goes on and as if with a friendly alibi in mind, Susan's G+ profile and the contents in it, appear to me right when I am shaping the last touches of my own PhD project's design.
I have read several of Professor Dray's papers through the last seven months since my PhD research project begun. From the first instance, Dray has come about as an active advocate and expert practitioner of user-research, of the so-called "getting to know the user" for technological design.
For what I've read and do now see, no doubt Susan rocks out there, on paper and in-the-field!
Read Susan's Latest Adventures-In-The-Field, in Veraguas, Panamá!
Dray blogs away this very project through a set of orderly and lively descriptive blog posts filled-in with a richness that shows the researcher preparing and wearing all-detail to carry out research in-the-field and design implementation. This is gold at this stage in my own research and project interests, as it is to do with technology, happens in participation between facilitator and participants, in a non-western setting, and Dray have provided herself with a crew of local volunteers that help in carrying out the travelling and action involved in this project.
 |
| Photograph shown from Susan's blog - Fulbrighttopanama.blogspot.co.uk |
To add to the challenge, the facilitator, as she herself points out, does not speak the local language - Spanish. However it is noticeable how the experienced facilitator lack of languages skills alongside the lack of local area knowledge must be planned in advance, as they can easily become hurdles in environments where some of the work and tasks may lead the facilitator to geographical realms where the company and ultimate lead of a local makes the adventure to not be adventurous where it is best to hold control.
Dray illustrates in this post how to provide oneself with the daily needs of buying stone beads:
Stone Beads with not Stone Pain
By the look of the above and the project overall, it seems Dray has provided herself with a volunteer lot of collaborators that make the work easier and to quickly gain trust from participants when going to the rural areas where some of the work is undertaken.
 |
| The Questionnaire team... image from Susan Dray's blog |
 |
| Participation in implementation. image Susan's blog |
Through her blog, Dray does visually show us around the environments where she and the local team are implementing their project. This by the same token becomes a precious piece of ethnographic and storytelling research that helps me in keeping defining my own research project with examples by established practitioners working across'cultures.
The ending of this post comes with both, the twit I sent this afternoon to Susan once I discovered on, and read about the project, and with a music radio station I rather enjoy - and that comes from those latitudes of the American continent - Casino Estereo.
TWITTER MESSAGE:
Precioso y muy visual su storytelling, Susan, qué bonito proyecto!
Triggering thoughts, mental visualisations and interesting & inspiring insights towards my own #PD projects with #Persona eliciting cultural factors in non-traditionally western settings - and how I envisage them. Thanks for your #Professionalism & #Experience!
Posted on 15/04/2014
by @UXGentleman
