The Human Show: Innovation through Social Science

Anna Kirah is an internationally respected design anthropologist and psychologist known for pioneering the people-centric approach to innovation and change management. Her passions are co-creation and working with “transdisciplinary” teams. Anna believes that creating meaningful, relevant, desirable and sustainable products, services and organizational changes happen only by understanding people’s...

Jamer Hunt is the Vice Provost for Transdisciplinary Initiatives at The New School, where he was a founding director (2009-2015) of the graduate program in Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons School of Design. He is also Visiting Design Researcher at the Institute of Design in Umea, Sweden. With Paola Antonelli at the MoMA he was co-creator of the award-winning, curatorial experiment and book Desi...

Steph Creasy is the Managing Director of Digital Arts which is based in Auckland. Digital Arts is one of New Zealand’s preeminent human-centered Digital Agency and has designed and delivered exceptional digital experiences for New Zealand’s largest private and public organisations for over 20 years. Steph herself has nearly 20 years’ experience as an experienced human-centered design practitioner,...

Angèle Christin has a PhD in Sociology from Princeton University and the EHESS (Paris). She is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and affiliated faculty in the Sociology Department and Program in Science, Technology, and Society at Stanford University. She is interested in how algorithms and analytics transform professional values, expertise, and work practices. Cu...

Matt May has had an extensive career in technology design, access and inclusivity. He is currently Head of Inclusive Design for Adobe where his work includes integrating inclusive design practices across every aspect of the Adobe user experience, training and mentoring the Adobe Design team, and advocating principles of accessibility and inclusive design to the public at large. In today’s episode...

In today’s episode we talk to Thomas about what a game is and how a well-designed one balances constraints and unpredictabilities. We cover what relationships people build in and around games and how it (often) outstrips the designers’ expectations of them; his experience with Linden Lab and how Second Life was designed not as a game but as a platform for game making; player governance as a legiti...

Saswati (Sas) Saha Mitra has both a diverse background (Literature, Political Science and Business) as well as an extensive career in research having worked for companies such as Google, Vodafone, Intel, Nokia, Whirlpool, United Spirits and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She has worked with multidisciplinary teams bringing UX driven product development to their Engineering processes. She h...

Mizuko (Mimi) Ito is a cultural anthropologist and learning scientist studying children and youth's new media use. She has 2 PhDs from Stanford University, one in Anthropology with the Dissertation "Engineering Play: Children's Software and the Productions of Everyday Life" and one in Education with the Dissertation "Interactive Media for Play: Kids, Computer Games, and the Producti...

Mrudula Sreekanth has an MICT from the International University in Germany and over 13 years of experience in User Experience Research and Interaction Design in the technology space in India having worked with companies such as SAP, Samsung and Oracle. She is currently the Business Head - UX Research for Peepal Design India. Her areas of expertise include: User Experience Research, Contextual Inte...

Ann Hsieh is a mixed-methods research leader and loves adapting or creating new methods to build greater impact with stakeholders. She currently leads research for Groups team at Facebook and has 13 years of industry experience from Google, Nokia, and Yahoo. She has published and presented papers at conferences in the US, Europe, and Asia since 2005. Ann has a master’s from Stanford University and...

Dr. Henrique Z. M. Parra has an MsC in Sociology (USP), a PhD in Political Science (UNICAMP) and is currently a permanent Professor of Social Sciences at the Federal University of Sao Paulo (UNIFESP). He worked as a professor, researcher and project lead at public and academic institutions in areas connected to social economic development, (social) technology, public policy, human rights and commu...

We talk with Jacquelyn about the definitions and components of AI and ethics at Microsoft ; how she works with ethics within an enterprise solution team, transitioning from high level ethics principles to day to day product work. We cover metrics around ethics, the connection between ethics and consumer trust and governance. Lastly we talk about the value of a social scientist and how to approach...

Scott Matter is a sociocultural anthropologist and a political ecologist with experience both in the strategic design sector as well as in the academic sector. He has run projects in four countries on three continents, in a range of rural, urban and digital spaces. He holds a PhD in anthropology from McGill University, was a post doc fellow with Rutgers University and an anthropology lecturer with...

Matt Bernius has had an extensive career working at the intersection of design and anthropology. Matt holds a MA in the social sciences from the University of Chicago and was a visiting professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology where he co-founded the Open Publishing Lab (OPL), a cross-disciplinary research lab that built open source publishing tools. He also was a student in Cornell Univ...

Jessica Outlaw, M.S., is a culture and behavior researcher in immersive tech and the Founder of The Extended Mind. She uses behavioral science to help XR companies build and test experiences. She does research in digital worlds, app design, and gives trainings to new and experienced designers. We talk to Jessica about what it’s like to bootstrap your own applied research career and her past and cu...

Sibel Kusimba is an Anthropologist who does both archaeological and anthropological fieldwork within Kenya. Throughout the years 2012 to 2018 she has been doing research into mobile money such as M-Pesa within Kenya, looking into how technological payment methods have changed people’s relationship to money and how they interact with each other (e.g. maintaining social relationships and commitments...

Shriram Venkatraman has academic and industry career tracks that both sit at the intersection of big and thick data. He has a background in Diversity and People Analytics with Walmart Stores, Inc., USA and a PhD in Digital Anthropology from UCL, London. He is currently an Assistant Professor - Centre for IT and Society and the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities at Indraprastha Institute...

José Manuel dos Santos has an MA In Industrial Design from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design/UK, an Executive MA in Product Design and Development from the Northwestern University/USA and over 20 years of experience in design and design management having worked with companies such as Masco, Node, Innovagency and Phillips Lighting (currently Signify) where he is at present the Head of...

Dr. Grant Jun Otsuki is currently a lecturer in cultural anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. He received his Ph. D. in Social-cultural Anthropology at the University of Toronto in 2015 and from 2015 to 2017, he was an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Tsukuba in Japan. His research interest is in science and technology studies and cultural anthr...

Kathy Baxter has an MS in Engineering Psychology from Georgia Institute of Technology and has been on the “Silicon Valley tour” working for companies such as Google, eBay, Oracle and (now) Salesforce. She is currently a Research Architect at Salesforce where she uses her skills in HCI, ethnography, I/O Psychology, ethics, AI and experimental design to create innovative experiences across Salesforc...

Andy Goodman, VP Experience Design at BCG Digital Ventures is an artist turned service designer with a wealth of experience in the design space having worked (amongst others) as a VP of Consumer Products for Cortica and a Group Director for Fjord. He has spent many years leading multidisciplinary teams to innovate services. His specialities include: Service Design, Design Leadership, New Products,...

Jamie Sherman holds a PHD from Princeton in Cultural Anthropology and is a Senior User Experience Researcher with the Intel Corporation most recently focused on AR, VR content creation and gaming. Her areas of expertise also include wearable technologies, personal data & quantified self and language & behaviour. In her work with the Intel Corporation she supports multiple stakeholders, inc...

Dan Podjed is an applied anthropologist with 15+ years' experience in ethnographic research, project management, and university teaching. He is a founder of EASA Applied Anthropology Network and Why the World Needs Anthropologists event, annually organised since 2013. He is devoted to developing people-centred and environmentally responsible services, products and solutions. Amongst his fields of...

In this episode we talk to Stephen Rea and Taylor Nelms about mobile money and financial apps. Stephen Rea and Taylor Nelms are two anthropologists who work at University of California, Irvine. We talk about their research, people’s relationship/interaction with mobile money, debate ethical concerns and the nature of money itself and much more. We really dive into what mobile money is and the stru...

Dr. Betsy DiSalvo is an Assistant Professor at the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. There she leads the Culture and Technology Lab, where they research how cultural values impact the use and production of technologies. Betsy’s work includes the development of the Glitch Game Tester Program and projects for Walker Art Center and other research on people's relation...