Angry and Passionate about what AI means to Researchers
In the latest episode of the Rosenfeld Review, Lou sits down with social scientist Tricia Wang, coiner of the term âthick data,â and formerly a partner at Sudden Compass. Tricia is passionate about research and AI. She envisions massively improved research outcomes and opportunities for researchers, but only if researchers take the lead in incorporating AI into their work. Rather than seeing themselves as âusersâ of AI tools, researchers must work as AIâs âshapers,â serving as its senior partner.
Triciaâs vision is to cease the fear-mongering surrounding the subject of AI and instead embrace the amazing opportunities for growth and better work by becoming active in the control of AIâs future.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
- The truth about the potential for AI use in research and the gift that it actually is
- The difference between a âuserâ and a âshaperâ in the digital age
- The importance of taking an active role in the development of AI in the future
- How being an asset class dehumanizes us as people
Quick Reference Guide:
[0:16] – Louâs introduction of Tricia Wang
[2:52] – Tricia discusses our future and how we talk about AI
[3:49] – Thoughts on the narrative of fear-mongering we have in the West about AI
[5:47] – The relationship between humans and AI
[5:59] – A new framework: users vs shapers
[9:07] – The problem with taking on a passive role with a technology unlike anything we have ever seen
[11:06] – People who use AI successfully are active shapers
[15:33] – Info on Advancing Research 2024
[17:23] – How users, shapers, and AI affect the field of research
[20:42] – The existential question of what it really means to be a researcher
[31:28] – Triciaâs advice concerning using AI in research
[35:07] – Triciaâs gift for the audience
[38:34] – Tricia wants to hear from you
Crafting Metrics for UX Success with Kate Rutter
After a start in digital software, Kate Rutter realized that qualitative definitions of success could, and needed to be, made more quantitative. Years later, sheâs Principal at Intelleto, Adjunct Professor in the IXD program at California College of the Arts, and the instructor of our upcoming UX workshop âCrafting Metrics for UX Success.”
In this episode, she reflects on the extraordinary success with qualitative metrics she has observed in the UX field, and the room for growth around numerical metrics, as well as the many challenges companies are faced with when trying to determine which metrics really matter. Kateâs four part workshop (August 6-7 and August 13-14) is intended to help designers gain a numerical understanding of successâand determine what metrics they need to measure in the first place (not just the easy ones!)
AI: Passionate defenses and reasoned critique [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
AI adoption is rapidly accelerating in the insights space, and researchers are rushing to explore the possibilities and pitfalls it presents. Without a doubt, it will change the nature of our work, but where do we stand now? Our panelists will examine passionate defenses for the value of AI, offer reasoned critiques, discuss practical applications, and discuss how we can collectively move forward in an ethical and human-centered manner.
Attend all of our Advancing Research community workshops
Each free virtual workshop is made up of panelists who will share short provocations on engaging ideas to discuss as a group, as well as a leader in our field to moderate. If you’re looking for discussions that challenge the status quo and can truly advance research, look no further than our workshop series. (P.S. Weâll be drawing most of our Advancing Research 2025 conference speakers from those who present at upcoming workshopsâso tune in for a sneak peek of what’s to come from #AR2025!)
July 24, 4-5pm EDT | Watch Video | Theme 1: Democratization Working with it, not against |
August 7, 11am-12pm EDT | Watch Video | Theme 2: Collaboration Learning from market research, data science, customer experience, and more |
August 21, 4-5pm EDT | Watch Video | Theme 3: Communication Innovative techniques for making your voice heard |
September 4, 11am-12pm EDT | Watch Video | Theme 4: Methods Expanding the UXR toolkit beyond interviews |
September 18, 4-5pm EDT | Watch Video | Theme 5: Artificial Intelligence Passionate defenses, reasoned critiques, and practical application |
October 2, 11am-12pm EDT | Register | Theme 6: Junctures for UXR Possible futures and the critical decisions to move us forward |
October 16, 4-5pm EDT | Register | Theme 7: Open Call Propose ideas that donât match our other workshopsâ themes |
Prayag Narula on AIâs Role in Qualitative Research
Prayag Narula is the founder and CEO of Marvin, a tool for qualitative researchers. Prayag will also be a speaker at the Advancing Research Conference where heâll share the stage with Rida Qadri, a research scientist at Google.
Humans have been doing quantitative research for thousands of years â well, for as long as math has been around. Qualitative research, on the other hand, is fairly new to human history, emerging only in the 20th Century. And qualitative research has taken a backseat to what Prayag calls âthe tyranny of math,â the prevailing attitude that if research is not math-based, itâs not valid. But that doesnât diminish the importance of qualitative data. Decisions at all levels are made based on qualitative data every day.
Here are some characteristics of qualitative research:
⢠Qualitative research is scientific and has been used in the social sciences for scientific discovery for six decades.
⢠Qualitative data is highly variable and semi-structured, so creating software for it has enormous challenges.
⢠Taking notes and asking questions are inherent parts of qualitative research, and tools that can search and synthesize such data can dramatically enhance productivity and outcomes.
Itâs time for qualitative research to be given its due. Enter Marvin.
Software not only gives validity and legitimacy to qualitative research, it makes it more useful. Marvin uses AI to add context to the conversation and to help with analysis. The tool is free for individuals and teams of two researchers.
Prayag is excited about the use of open AI and ChatGBT. Heâs not worried about these tools replacing researchers, but they do give researchers another data point, that is, what AI can glean from the data. AI can help us find patterns that we didnât see before or might give an interpretation of the data or ask a question that hadnât been previously considered. With tools like Marvin, itâs an exciting time to be in research.
What youâll learn from this episode
⢠How software brings legitimacy to processes and data
⢠About Marvin, a tool that âautomates the tedious parts of qualitative researchâ
⢠How AI can augment research
⢠What to expect from Prayagâs upcoming talk with Rida Qadri at Advancing Research â âHCI 2.0: Humanity Deserves the Attention that UX Research has to Offerâ â which will include implementing technologies in a socially responsible way
Quick Reference Guide
[00:00] Introduction of Prayag
[01:07] Upcoming talk at Advancing Research March 27-29, 2023
[01:29] Prayag gives a history of his entrepreneurial experience
[05:15] Prayag explains why he felt driven to provide a centralized place for data
[08:53] Does having software to support qualitative research contribute to its perceived legitimacy?
[11:00] On the nature of qualitative research being highly variable and semi-structured and what that means when it comes to writing software
[16:12] Break: Rosenfeld Media Communities
[18:16] Prayag describes the Marvin tool, available for free for individual researchers and teams of two
[0:19:52] The role of AI in research software
[0:25:04] On AIâs ability to synthesize data across various sectors of an organization
[0:29:08] More details Prayagâs upcoming talk with Rida Qadri at Advancing Research in March
[0:32:33] Prayagâs gift to the audience
Decentralizing Power through Design with Sahibzada Mayed and Lauren Lin
Sahibzada Mayed and Lauren Lin will be speakers at the upcoming DesignOps Summit on October 2-4, 2023. Their talk, âCultivating Design Ecologies of Care, Community, and Collaboration,â will showcase the intersection of care-centeredness and design operations.
Lauren has wanted to be a designer since she was in third grade. What kind of designer? An âeverythingâ designer! From a young age, she embraced the idea that âyou can design anythingâ from fashion to environments to moods and feelings. Today she employs ethical research practices and co-design to shift power and amplify youth voices, design toys, and bring play into her work at Ideo Play Lab.
Mayed has a social service and social impact background. Through a community-oriented storytelling approach, they co-lead strategy and research at Cause and Affect, a relational design consultancy in Canada.
Lauren and Mayedâs partnership began with conversations and exploration about what they could do to shift power dynamics and create more cohesive and engaging designs for all. The biggest hindrance, say Lauren and Mayed, is power hierarchies. Design leaders need to critically think about social identities, institutional positions, and other complexities and dimensions. How power shows up in our practices is always shifting and changing, and decentralizing power has to be an ongoing and emergent process.
And it all starts with ideas and conversations. Mayed and Lauren have found that speculative design is a powerful way to reflect on the ânowâ and dream about what the future could look like. All real-world shifts begin with ideas, relationships, and conversations. These elements are at the heart of design.
What youâll learn from this episode:
– About Lauren and Mayedâs backgrounds
– How their partnership came about
– About the talk titled âCultivating Design Ecologies of Care, Community, and
– Collaborationâ that they will deliver at Octoberâs DesignOps Summit
– About power hierarchies in design and what design leaders can do to help decentralize power
– About the role and potential of speculative design
Quick Reference Guide
[0:00:19] Introduction of Sahibzada Mayed and Lauren Lin
[0:01:03] Mayed and Laurenâs backgrounds
[0:05:53] The working partnership between Mayed and Lauren
[0:08:45] Power hierarchies and design
[0:11:56] The DesignOps leaderâs role
[0:15:26] Alternative means of engagement
[0:18:36] DesignOps Summit, October 2-6, 2023
[0:19:59] A care-centered approach to the future through establishing patterns
[0:24:37] Mayed and Laurenâs gifts for the audience
Liftoff! Practical Design Leadership to Elevate Your Team, Your Organization, and You
Top designers are often thrust into leadership roles, and itâs easy to forget that these two roles do not require the same skillset. In this episode, design managers and Liftoff! co-authors Chris Avore and Russ Unger discuss the mistakes and lessons theyâand MANY othersâhave made in their new book, four years in the works. Liftoff! is a guide for new leaders looking for guidance about managing design teams effectively, and established managers who want to level up their expertise.
Handling Complexity: Framing a Scale of Design
Designing “at scale” assumes conceptual consensus on what the particular levels of that ‘scale’ actually are. In the last few years, UX professionals have specialized into UX researchers, product designers, service designers design strategists, etc. Nowadays, we’re also witnessing the debut of a new term: “system designers”. But do we really understand how these job titles and subthemes of UX fit within that scale of complexity in design?
In this presentation, we’ll introduce the basic levels of a scale of design, articulate how common UX job titles fit on the scale, and map how the work we commonly tackle in both research and design should also be informed by the scale of the problem we’re addressing. We’re also going to critique the (somewhat misguided) ways the current world of UX is handling the widespread growth in the complexity of our work.
Advancing Service Design with Ben Reason and Patrick Quattlebaum
Is it time to advance the practice of service design?
Ben Reason and Patrick Quattlebaum think so. Theyâre veteran service designers and co-authors of a pair of Rosenfeld booksâService Design: From Insight to Implementation and Orchestrating Experiences: Collaborative Design for Complexity respectively.
Ben, founder of LiveWork Studio, and Patrick, who founded Harmonic Design in Atlanta, join Lou to talk about launching a new Rosenfeld conferenceâAdvancing Service Designâdesigned to highlight the service designâs potential for a new generation. They see opportunities for service design to go deeperâby integrating with and strengthening existing practices, like product management and agile, and broaderâby better connecting systems that span multiple organizations (think healthcare).
Working with the Rosenfeld team, theyâre creating a conference program that you can be a part ofâthey describe the kinds of presentation proposals theyâre looking for from prospective speakers. Patrick and Ben hope youâll join them in advancing service design; the conference will take place virtually December 3-4.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
- The real meaning of service design
- How service design is evolving
- Some crucial differences between the work in North America and Europe
- Why communication between organizations is so important
- How the upcoming conference will inspire and support you
- How to contribute and become part of the upcoming case studies
- How the panel discussions at the December conference will be different
Quick Reference Guide:
0:15 – Introduction to Ben and Patrick
1:50 – Being change agents to take Service Design to the next level
5:03 – Announcing a new conference: Advancing Service Designâ Looking at Service Design Through Different Lenses
6:05 – Perspectives on different sides of the Atlantic
11:30 – Why service design exists in the first place
12:38 – More about the upcoming December virtual conference
17:40 – Call for proposals for the case studies and what they are looking for
19:00 – Benâs ideas for the conference: The next iteration of service design going from within an organization to between multiple organizations
21:09 – Patrickâs ideas for the conference: Getting the people who want to transform things to communicate and the complexity of partnering together
23:05 – Bringing success from the inside
24:45 – Commercial break
27:10 – Personal story from Patrick about communication highlighting the broader concept of the case studies for the conference
32:30 – Personal story from Ben about connection across systems
37:16 – A different type of panel discussion to be at the conference
40:15 – Gifts for listeners
Maximizing the Impact of Content Design with Jonathon Colman
Jonathon Colman, Senior Design Manager at Intercom and DesignOps Summit 2020 speaker joins Lou to discuss the challenges of developing content operations (and, sure, letâs go there: ContentOps). Should ContentOps stand alone, or be situated as part of a larger DesignOps team? Jonathon also shares how his team sets consistent expectations and defines success metrics across for designers of all stripes, whether they focus on content, product, research, or design roles.
Frameworks for Excellence: Using Visual Thinking and Communication to Elevate Your Research
The research industry struggles with effectively communicating complex findings, meaning valuable knowledge is often misunderstood or under-utilized. Dense reports and impenetrable data presentations can carry the blame for much of this. However, embracing visual frameworks and storytelling techniques can make complex data more digestible and engaging. Frameworks thinking not only helps findings spread further, but empowers stakeholders to âthink with the ideasââenhancing both the impact and audience of insight. The session will look at some examples of powerful visual framework to enable attendees to learn how to transform complex data into engaging visuals and narratives, and give clear strategies for making insight more accessible and impactful.