REDRUM in the rue morgue: collaboration in international communities
Read about this panel and join us in room 6 - Saturday March 8th, at 3:30PM. We will discuss collaboration in international communities along four directions: (1) user-interface and information and visualization design; (2) the 50x 15 Initiative (One Laptop per Child); (3) Second Life and (empirical) observations of cultural preferences in web 2.0; and (4) cultural models in game design.
After the presentations, panelists will adress this question among others:
In your area of expertise you necessarily work with (or from) cultural models (even if you have abstracted them empirically from your practice). When working in the field, in your research work… how do you embrace these cultural models while at the same time dispelling stereotypes?
Panelists: Aaron Marcus , Steve Howard , Prentiss Riddle, and Tim Landgell.
Moderator: Ana Boa-Ventura
See you there!
Posted by anaboa-ventura in Latest News |
Ana has asked me to post a bit about what I plan to cover in my talk.
I like to see some give and take on a SXSW panel, so for the sake of discussion I am going to stake out the argument that reliance on cultural models is dangerous. My inclination is to drop the models as quickly and possible and go to actual users and data, and secondarily to informants who have close experience with actual users, in order to focus on d truth” rather than cultural generalities.
It’s true that we all approach a user community with preconceptions, and being aware of e models we are using can both expose our hidden assumptions and help us ask the right questions. So if the model (whether a formal one like Hofstede’s cultural dimensions or an formal one like cultural stereotypes) says that we should expect behavior X and Y from a given community, some of my first questions to the users and to the data would be intended to test our expectations for X and Y.
It should be fun to see how my fellow panelists respond to that friendly provocation!
P.S. If you’re lucky, there will be lolcats. See you there.
Comment by riddle — March 6, 2008 @ 6:47 am
(That was supposed to be “ground truth.” They don’t seem to have comment editing enabled on this blog.)
Comment by riddle — March 6, 2008 @ 6:50 am