EPIC 2006

ABSTRACTS, BIOS AND POSTERS


	Abstracts Bios Posters Proceedings

	Abstracts TRANSITIONS IN EVERYDAY LIFE - Introduction (CHRISTIAN MADSBJERG) No abstract availiable Larger Than Life: Bodily and Social Transitions within Type 2 Diabetes (LISA REICHENBACH & AMY MAISH) Type 2 diabetes, a chronic illness, is reaching epidemic proportions in North America. Pharmaceutical and consumer companies alike are embracing ethnography as a means to gain insight into the condition and to meet the complex needs of diabetics. This paper explores three topics that emerged from our ethnographic work in this area. First, we discuss the contribution of ethnography towards understanding the lived experience of Type 2 diabetes. Second, we suggest Type 2 diabetes should be viewed as a meta-transition that encapsulates four types of transition, each of which is an important aspect of the diabetic experience, and which may provide critical insights in an applied context. Third, we argue that applied ethnography can be dramatically enriched by an anthropologically and theoretically informed approach, without which the experience of, and transitions within, Type 2 diabetes cannot be fully understood and the social and business benefits maximized. Design for Healthy Living: Mobility and the Disruption of Daily Healthcare Routines (AME ELLIOTT & BRINDA DALAL) This paper reports on how people express health concerns as they move around their homes and travel between their homes and workplaces, stores, gyms, restaurants, friends' homes, hotels and other locations. We gathered stories from focus groups and in-home interviews with people with a broad range of health needs, and from these discussions, support for mobility emerged as a key issue for making health maintenance routines easy and resilient in the face of disruptions. The things people carry with them and access at strategic places help them maintain their health routines in the face of stressful and unforeseen situations. Walking the Interface: Uncovering Practices Through 'Proxy Technology Assessment' (JO PIERSON, AN JACOBS, KATRIEN DREESSEN, ISABEL VAN DEN BROECK, BRAM LIEVENS & WENDY VAN DEN BROECK) This paper describes the method of "proxy technology assessment", which implies the formalisation of using current technological objects available on the market to generate a richer understanding of future everyday life practices with new media technologies. First, the theoretical framework grounded in theories of social constructivism and domestication is being outlined. Here the concept of "users as innovators" is placed at the centre. Next the concept and the method of proxy technology assessment is presented and elaborated. The results of a recent case study on mobile television on a handheld device are used to illustrate this method. In conclusion we reflect on the possibilities of the integration of the insights gained with this method in the design loop. A Sum Greater than the Parts: Combining Contextual Inquiry with Other Methods to Maximize Research Insights into Social Transitions (ERIN LEEDY & THEO DOWNES-LE GUIN) no abstract available Sunday is Family Day (CRYSTA J. METCALF & GUNNAR HARBOE) This paper explores the transitions between "my-time" and "your-time," between different social roles, and between different technological contexts. We used shadowing, voice-mail diaries and semi-structured group interviews to investigate the limits of seamless mobility. We identified an interesting behavior we call a "peek": a quick look ahead in order to prepare for transitions. We also found that people are able to able to infer a lot from very little contextual information, and we argue that technologies designed for the above transitions therefore should rely on a few, well-chosen pieces of presence/awareness data, rather than exhaustive information. As a guide to invention and design, this study underlines the need to recognize our users' intelligence. Instead of making applications that anticipate what users wants to do, we suggest providing information that is relevant and clear enough that users can take a glance at it and decide for themselves how to proceed. We We We All The Way Home: The "We" Affect in Transitional Spaces (KEN ANDERSON & ROGÉRIO DE PAULA ) The majority of ethnographic studies for businesses have focused on places: home, work, "third places," and even "non-places". Daily life, however, is composed of transitional moments - matter of "in-betweeness." Transitional spaces and movements have increasingly been sites for "filling the gap" informational and "cocooning" products. We explored the in-between transitional moments on buses and commuter boats in Salvador, Bahia. We contend that the experience in this time-space creates a "we-tween" or just a "we-we," which engages the people and the environment in a moment of group solidarity and interactivity. We contrast this study of in-between to those we conducted in "Western" countries. The "we" affect suggests that corporate efforts in design and development have been disproportionally focused on Euro-North American values, which has direct implications for corporate innovation. We highlight the value of a multi-voiced approach in the collaboration between our US research lab and our product lab in Brazil, as one kind of solution to the problems of appropriate innovation. SOCIAL TRANSITIONS - Introduction (RACHEL JONES) no abstract available Power Point and the Crafting of Social Data (NINA WAKEFORD) no abstract available Skillful Strategy, Artful Navigation & Necessary Wrangling (SUZANNE L. THOMAS & TONY SALVADOR) This paper addresses three main issues: the fixation on the individual in corporate research, the emic need to privilege and represent relationships driving the political and cultural economic lived experience and the pressing need to find useful, effective ways engage corporate structures that otherwise are impervious to "views of the collective". That is, we argue for a reframing of ethnographic work in industry (in some instances) from that of the individual to that of sufficiently contextually complete relationships people have with other people and institutions, especially when working with "emerging markets." We rely on data and sources from comparative ethnographic work over time in several countries to identify what we need to study and to suggest new, more powerful directions for our research. We also suggest implications for how to navigate within corporate structures in order to liberate ourselves and our work. The Yin and Yang of Seduction and Production: Social Transitions of Ethnography Between Seductive Play and Productive Force in Industry (ELIZABETH (DORI) TUNSTALL) This paper examines social transitions in forms of ethnographic representation from seductive play to productive force in Industry. With a focus on the hi-tech consulting and marketing fields, I examine the eight strategies of ethnographic representation include, (1) informal conversations, (2) designed printed materials, (3) video, (4) electronic presentations, (5) personas and scenarios, (6) experience models and diagrams, (7) opportunity matrices, (8) and experience metrics. It addresses the use of these strategies within modal degrees of symbolic seduction and productive force as shaped by the theories of Baudrillard and Taoist philosophy. I propose that the combination of the concepts of Seductive Play and Productive Force and Yin Yang provide a way out of several challenges in ethnography's engagement with business decision-making, especially related to its role, mission, and power. I attempt to seduce ethnographers into seeing themselves as Taoist "scholar/warriors" able to maintain the human-centered balance in any Industry context. At Home in the Field: From objects to Lifecycles (ALEXANDRA ZAFIROGLU & ASHWINI ASOKAN) In this paper, we explore how biographies of domestic objects are intertwined with the personal biographies of their owners and caretakers, narratives of household formation, and the life cycle of the family, and how we position the value of this work to business planners and engineers at Intel Corporation. By being curious and interested in objects in people's homes and listening carefully to the narratives people tell about them, we create moving pictures of culturally-inflected constructions of individuals' and groups' lifecycles which in turn demonstrates how 'objects' are not 'objective', but always constituted and given meaning through relationships with and among people. At Intel Corporation, understanding life cycle transitions mediated by domestic objects deepens our knowledge both of technology in domestics spaces and of our current and potential customers and is an integral part of the development of technologies that enable experiences people will value. From Ethnographic Insight to User-centered Design Tools (ROBIN BEERS, PAMELA WHITNEY) This case study illustrates how Wells Fargo, a leading financial services institution, builds user-centered online experiences on a foundation of ethnographic insight. The research maintains a shelf life of several years and findings are kept alive through multidisciplinary participation and reusable user-centered design tools. Between Cram School and Career in Tokyo (DIANE J. SCHIANO, AME ELLIOTT & VICTORIA BELLOTTI) In a series of studies (including interviews, observations, surveys and focus groups), we explored the leisure practices of young adults in Tokyo. After initial fieldwork with a wide age-range of participants, we narrowed our focus to 19-25 year olds, who have more leisure time and for whom leisure activities hold greater significance. In this paper, we briefly characterize these transitional "golden years" between cram school and career in Japan, and illustrate how a grounded understanding of leisure preferences and patterns can help suggest issues and opportunities for design. Transitions/Translations/Gaps: Ethnographic Representations in the Pharmaceutical Industry (JOHN P. WENDEL & LISA HARDY) no abstract available CULTURAL TRANSITIONS - Introduction - WWMD? Ethical Impulses and the Project of Ethnography in Industry (MELISSA CEFKIN) This early moment in the formation of an ethnographic project in and of the corporate world is pregnant with possibility. This paper seeks guidance from earlier practitioners and scholars of ethnography and design as to how to grasp this potential. This consideration is particularly timely in light of a current interest of companies in the motivations, practices and behavior of the people through which they achieve their goals. This concern is particularly relevant to services-an area of particular growth and attention-in that what is being sold or exchanged in services is the performance of the people, often acting with or through other resources. As actors in these services systems, ethnographers in industry are both subject to and influencers of the dynamics of the service economy, and, in light of the broad-based concern for services and for the motivations, practices and behaviors of actors in services systems, it is apt to explore our own practices and impulses. I suggest that the work of ethnography in industry would benefit from being conceptualized as project in its own right. This paper attempts to tease out some of the ethical impulses that underlie this project. From Ancestors to Herbs: Innovation According to the 'Protestant Re-formation' of African Medicine (STOKES JONES) This paper argues that popular healthcare practices in urban South Africa bear little resemblance to the essentialized descriptions of 'traditional African medicine' (TAM) that abound in the literature. It defines several key transitions that have occurred in African medicine, outlining how it can be re-formed on another basis which better matches both the pluralistic-synrcetistic logic of current medical practices and the less deferential 'spirit' of those enacting them. We present the search for 'embedded innovation' that we developed together with Procter & Gamble as a recommended approach for cross-cultural product development (in healthcare and more generally). 'Global Events Local Impacts': India's Rural Emerging Markets (NIMMI RANGASWAMY & KENTARO TOYAMA) The paper attempts to analyse rapidly changing rural Indian socio-economic landscapes from a recent empirical study of rural PC kiosks. Rural contexts in India are essentially composite and digitally immature communication ecologies. Some of the questions we wanted to answer were as follows: How do computing technologies find their way into a rural community? Who are the people driving this technology? How technology is being received by the community? Breaking away from a committed long-term participatory ethnography in a bounded field, we consider an array of wider contexts and a repertoire of methods available for qualitative research to study societies in transition. Online Place and Person-Making: Matters of the Heart and Self-Expression (RACHEL JONES & MARTIN ORTLIEB) In recent years, there has been a substantial take up in social software, but other than translating the vocabulary and arranging suitable payment facilities, little or no account is taken of cultural sense-making in the global deployment of these systems. We report on two studies of social software, an online dating site and a social network blog. We show that people need 'places' because it is only there persons can meaningfully be (re)presented. Further, 'cultural' perspectives greatly influence and shape the metaphors and models of communication. In our recommendations, we suggest that multinational participants' metaphors about 'place' should be used as tools-to-think-with rather than be implemented literally, and thereby used to enrich a feature set for global services such as online dating and blogging tools. Embed: Mapping the Future of Work and Play: A Case for "Embedding" Non-Ethnographers in the Field (ANDREW GREENMAN & SCOTT SMITH) This paper reflects on an experiment to combine an "ethnographic walking tour" with futures and foresight methods, as a means of enhancing and validating foresight exercises through the addition of valuable first-hand observation. The project, entitled Embed, was created to familiarize senior strategists, product developers, foresight specialists and marketers with the potential of ethnographic research to inform decision making. We introduce the concept of "embedding" to describe the process of placing non-ethnographers into fieldwork situations. We then reflect on the opportunities and limitations of creating spaces for embedding non-experts in such settings. In the recommendations, we summarize the experience from a practical as well as theoretical perspective. The paper raises two questions related to the spatialization of commercial ethnographic knowledge; first, the value of using "embedding" to extend the territory of ethnography to a wider audience. Second, what this experience reveals about the conditions under which commercial ethnographic knowledge is produced. The Real Problem: Rhetorics of Knowing in Corporate Ethnographic Research (DAWN NAFUS & KEN ANDERSON) This paper explores discourses of the 'real' in commercial ethnographic research, and the transitions and transformations those discourses make possible and impossible. A common strategy to legitimize industrial ethnography is to claim a special relationship to 'real people', or argue that one is capturing what is 'really' happening in 'natural' observation. Distancing language describes 'insights' into a situation somehow separate from ourselves, 'findings' and 'quotes' that we seemingly extract from one context and plunk in another. Whether it is chimps (in Jane Goodall's case) or consumers (in ours); we know what is going on or not. This model of ethnographic knowing has adopted the naturalistic science discourse of the behavioralist-the neutral observers in an environment. Here we explore how this epistemic culture has been created and its 'real' consequences. What we do not attempt is an assertion of the merits of one kind of ethnography over another, or a rehash of tired squabbles about ethnography as method versus ethnography as episteme. In fact, the authors themselves have been utterly complicit in producing discourses of 'real people' while holding epistemic allegiances elsewhere. Rather, we are more concerned to investigate the conditions, both within companies and for research agendas, that this way of talking effects. In our experience this language abdicates authorial responsibility, unduly reduces ethnography to "butterfly collecting" at the expense of other business opportunities. Why Real and Why Now? "Why are you taking my picture?": Navigating the Cultural Contexts of Visual Procurement (JAY HASBROUCK & SUSAN FAULKNER) This paper explores how methods used to procure ethnographic visuals transition between different cultural histories and varying visual vocabularies. We use an instance during which we were detained (and the police summoned) after taking photos of an apartment building in Cairo to illustrate how these transitions can lead to unexpected and serious consequences with which ethnographers must grapple. We argue that considering factors such as geo-political context, notions of giving and receiving, boundaries between private and public, as well as a culture's historical relationship with photographic and documentary processes, are all essential to developing a critical position on visual procurement in the field.

	Bios ken anderson is in Intel Research where he conducts ethnographic research of human cultures and social practices to inform corporate strategy and technology development. His specialties are in globalization, identity, and urban studies. His current work focuses on mobilities, time, and transnationals in and between urban environments. Ashwini Asokan is a design researcher with User Experience Group, Intel Corporation where she collects and translates stories about homes and people around the world into user experiences that inform design. She has a Masters in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.S in Visual Communication, Madras University, India. Robin Beers, PhD manages the user and syndicated research practices in the Wells Fargo Internet Services Group's Customer Experience Research & Design team. Victoria Bellotti ) is a principal scientist and user-centered technology researcher at PARC. Her interests include task- and personal-information management, ubiquitous computing and context aware computing. Jeanette Blomberg manages the People and Practices group at the IBM Almaden Research Center. Her research focuses on the interplay between people, technology and organizational practices with particular concern for how the work of organizations is accomplished through emergent, informal work practices. Prior to assuming her current position, Jeanette was Director of Experience Modeling Research at Sapient and a founding member of the Work Practice and Technology group at the Xerox PARC. Jeanette received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Davis. Elizabeth K. Briody is a cultural anthropologist working at GM R&D. Over the last two decades, her research has focused on organizational and work-related issues. In particular, she has conducted studies of employees working in a variety of functional areas at GM. More recently, she has been engaged in understanding collaboration both within GM, and with external partners. Keri Brondo is a post-doctoral research fellow at Michigan State University. She is the project director for a study exploring the relationship between productivity, work practices and socialization in a General Motors assembly plant in mid-Michigan. Keri also conducts ethnographic fieldwork with the Garífuna in Honduras, focusing on land rights and organizational representation. Françoise Brun-Cottan is principal investigator at Veri-Phi Consulting. Previously she was a Senior Research Scientist at Xerox PARC. Her interests are: video ethnography, interaction analysis and accountability in ethnographic practice. Francoise holds a Ph.d in Anthropology and an M.A in Folklore and Mythology from the University of California at Los Angeles and a BA in Political Science/Philosophy from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Jenna Burrell is a PhD student in the Sociology department at the London School of Economics. For her doctoral thesis she conducted an ethnographic study of Internet cafes in Accra, Ghana. Licia Calvi is a senior researcher at the Centre for Usability Research (CUO). Her research interests include usability and evaluation of (especially) e-learning systems, rhetoric and argumentation in digital media. She is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of E-learning and of the IASTED technical committee on Education. Melissa Cefkin is an anthropologist and a member IBM Research. Her work focuses on work and organizational issues particularly as it relates to services relationships and enterprise. Melissa has worked previously as a research director at Sapient Corporation and as a senior researcher at the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL). Michele F. Chang is a Senior Consultant, ReD Associates, Copenhagen. Her research interests are convergence of mobile technologies in public spaces and the critical relationship between research and design. She has a Masters of Interactive Telecommunications from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Shawn Collins works in product development process definition at UTC Power. His job is situated at the intersection of advanced R&D and prototyping for transportation and stationary fuel cell demonstrations. His interests lie at the interface between systems engineering, cultural anthropology and organizational behavior. He is a Ph.D student in cultural anthropology at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Martha Cotton is Research Director and ethnography practice lead for Hall & Partners, a brand and communications research firm. Brinda Dalal is a corporate anthropologist at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where she co-founded the Cleantech initiative. Prior to a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, she worked on micro-credit and low-cost housing programs in Bombay. Rogério de Paula is in Emerging Markets Platforms Group at Intel Corporation Brazil where he conducts ethnographic research of everyday practices and life of low-income people to help design new technological products. His specialties are in design ethnography. His current work focuses on education and urban areas in Latin America. Katrien Dreessen In 2005 Katrien Dreessen graduated in Communication Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel on a master thesis concerning initiatives of online consultation in Flanders) within a context of e-democracy. Since January 2006 she is part of IBBT-SMIT, where she is doing research on DVB-H-users aspects. Ame Elliott is an ethnographer and interaction designer on the research staff of the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). She has PhD in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied Human-Computer Interaction. Prior to joining PARC she worked at Ricoh Innovations studying image communication. Gunnar Harboe graduated from Cambridge and Carnegie Mellon with degrees in computer science and human-computer interaction. At Motorola Labs, he does user-centered research as well as application development. Gunnar's interests include the use of media content for communication and togetherness. Jay Hasbrouck holds a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology and an M.A. in Visual Anthropology from the University of Southern California. His research interests include narrative, techno-social networks, activism and resistance movements, and discourse analysis. He currently works in the Domestic Designs and Technologies Research Group at Intel Corporation. Susan Faulkner holds an M.A. in Documentary Film and Video Production from Stanford University, and a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Brown University. She began working as a video ethnographer at Interval Research Corporation in 1993. She currently works in the Domestic Designs and Technologies Research Group at Intel Corporation. Dan Formosa, PhD Dan holds a degree in Industrial Design, and a Master's and Ph.D. in Ergonomics and Biomechanics. He was on the design team for IBM's first personal computer. He is a founding member of Smart Design, and holds a wide array of patents and design awards. He lectures worldwide on design. Prof. Elizabeth Furtado (elizabeth@correio.unifor.br ) is Chair of SIGCHI in Brazil. She is professor at the MIA, University of Fortaleza, Ce, Brazil since 1989. She manages the laboratory of Software Quality and Usability Process. Consultant of Software Quality Process. Member of Editorial Board of the Kluwer international series on HCI since 2002 and International Journal of Information & Communication Technology Education (IJICTE). David Geerts (david.geerts@soc.kuleuven.be ) is project leader of the Centre for Usability Research (CUO). He is involved in several research projects on user-centred design and evaluation, a.o. the IBBT CIcK-project. He is taking his doctor's degree on Sociability of Interactive Television. He is Programme Manager of the Belgian SIGCHI.be chapter. Andrew Greenman (andrew@cross-fade.net) is a doctoral student at Nottingham University Business School. His thesis uses an ethnographic approach to understand the organization of creativity and commerce in the cultural economy. His research themes include organizational theory, identity-work and relational architectures of knowledge. His research is sponsored by the Economic Social Research Council. He also conducts commercial consultancy as Cross-fade.net. Dr. An Jacobs ( an.jacobs@vub.ac.be ) is a senior researcher at IBBT-SMIT and holds a PhD in Sociology. She has been managing this research on DVB-H user aspects. Besides her research position, she is guest lecturer in sociology of technology at the Hogeschool Antwerpen in the Department of Design Sciences. Rachel Jones is founder of Instrata, which specialises in people-driven innovation, user research and user-centred design services across Europe, and parts of Asia, Africa and the US. Prior to starting Instrata, Rachel was an Experience Modeler at Sapient and a research scientist at Xerox EuroPARC. Stokes Jones is Director of Lodestar, a company he founded in 2003 to help businesses identify and adopt to social and cultural changes shaping customers in particular markets. In three years its clients have included; the BBC, Halifax/Bank of Scotland, Procter & Gamble, Nokia, and three mobile network operators. Brigitte Jordan has carried out ethnographic research for more than 30 years in academic and corporate settings. Now a free-lance consultant, she holds the position of Consulting Principal Scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center. Many of her publications can be found at her website at www.lifescapes.org.y Nalini Kotamraju, PhD is a user researcher in the Software Experience Design (xDesign) at Sun Microsystems, Inc. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley. Bram Lievens ( bram.lievens@vub.ac.be ) is researcher for IBBT-SMIT at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), working on different policy and user oriented projects regarding new and emerging technologies, services and applications. Alexandra Mack is a Workplace Anthropologist in the Advanced Concepts and Technology Division of Pitney Bowes. Alex works primarily with a group called the Concept Studio, which is focused on developing ideas for new products and services based on a deep understanding of work practice. Tim Malefyt is Senior Vice President, Director of Cultural Discoveries at BBDO Advertising in New York. Wendy March is a Senior Researcher within Intel Research. As an interaction designer Wendy is particularly interested in translating her ethnographic research findings into new concepts and future scenarios. Since joining Intel her work has included both design and ethnographic research in the US, Europe and Asia. Tracy L. Meerwarth is a cultural anthropologist on contract working at General Motors Research and Development (GM R&D). Her research focuses on understanding organizational issues pertaining to GM's organizational partnerships with suppliers and R&D partners. Her current work includes research into understanding GM's automotive plant culture and building cognitive models that support collaboration. Crysta Metcalf graduated with a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Wayne State University, Detroit, with specializations in Business and Organizational Anthropology and Economic Anthropology. Since joining Motorola a little over 6 years ago, Crysta has specialized in adapting anthropological research methods and theory to application innovation and design. Martin Ortlieb is head of design research at Yahoo! Europe, where he oversees the user research for the European markets or collaborates on global projects for Yahoo!. He entered the world of commercial anthropology as an Experience Modeler at Sapient after completing his PhD at the University of Manchester. Dr. Jo Pierson is senior researcher at IBBT-SMIT. He lectures on socio-economic issues of the information society at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in the department of Communication Studies. He also holds a part-time research position focussed on applying social science research in the design and use of ICT. Bas Raijmakers is a user researcher and filmmaker helping multidisciplinary design teams in industry and academia to discover what matters to the people we design for. Dr Nimmi Rangaswamy (nimmir@ Microsoft.com ) is an Associate Researcher with Microsoft Research Labs, India. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology, 1999, from the University of Mumbai, India. She has taught graduate course at the Delhi and Mumbai Universities, 1988-1999. She was part of the editorial team for the journal, The Economic and Political Weekly, Mumbai, 2000-2001. Some of her recent papers can be found at http://research.microsoft.com/users/nimmir Lisa Reichenbach is with In-Sync Consumer Insight. Brian Rink is a design strategist and human factors researcher at IDEO's San Francisco Studio. He leads cross-disciplinary teams in new product development, brand strategy, and adoption of innovation processes. Brian holds a Master's Degree from the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Lisa Robinson is a graduate student in Michigan State University's Department of Anthropology where she did her MA on Poland's European Union Integration. Her PhD work, on the impact of electronic media on social relationships, is the result of 100's of hours chatting and SMS-ing with Polish college students. Dr. Anxo Cereijo Roibás (a.c.roibas@brighton.ac.uk ) is Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton. He has been involved in research projects addressing the User Experience with pervasive interactive multimedia systems, with support of the Vodafone Group Foundation, the British Royal Academic of Engineering and the BT IT Futures Research Centre. Member of the Executive Committee of the British-HIC Group. Tony Salvador, PhD (tony.salvador@intel.com) directs product definition and development research for the Emerging Markets Platforms Group (EMPG) at Intel. Before being demoted to management, he was a Research Scientist and co-founder of Intel's People & Practices Group. Diane J. Schiano (dschiano@parc.com )is an ethnographer and user experience researcher at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Her interests include mediated communication and sociality. Gülcin Sengir is a computer scientist working at GM R&D. Her research interests are in modeling and knowledge-based techniques to support human decision making and learning. For the past couple of years, she has been collaborating with GM's cultural anthropologists on understanding dynamics in collaborative relationships on the plant floor and among research partnerships. Scott Smith (scott.smith@soctech.com) is a futurist with Social Technologies, an international research and consulting firm dedicated to helping organizations understand and shape the future of their business. In his work he combines global forecasting and analysis tools with expertise in strategic exploration and innovation processes to equip organizations with the ability to look five, ten, or twenty-five years into the future. He specializes in forecasting the evolution of interaction between people, technology and infrastructure. He joined Social Technologies after 10 years as a researcher and analyst focusing on the impact of new technologies on consumers and businesses. Suzanne L. Thomas (suzanne.l.thomas@intel.com) has been reading Hong Kong martial arts novels and watching too much PRC TV since the mid-1980s. She did more of the same to get her PhD in communications and culture from UCSD. She now works at Intel researching emerging markets in China. Dr Kentaro Toyama (kentoy@ Microsoft.com )is Assistant Managing Director, Microsoft Research Labs India and Lead, Technology for Emerging Markets group. Dr Toyama's recent papers can be found at http://research.microsoft.com/toyama/ Robert T. Trotter, II is a sociocultural anthropologist with strong interests in cognitive, ecological, cultural models, social networks theory, and methods in applied anthropology. He has a long term interest in research on cross cultural and community based collaborations. He is an Arizona Regent's Professor (Northern Arizona University) and is currently under contract to General Motors R&D working on models for internal-external research collaboration, ideal plant culture models, and some small projects in the area of design anthropology. Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall (etunst@uic.edu ) formerly was a user experience strategist at Sapient and Arc Worldwide. Currently, she is Associate Professor of Design Anthropology at University of Illinois at Chicago and Associate Director of the City Design Center. She holds Anthropology degrees from Bryn Mawr College (BA) and Stanford University (MA/Ph.D.). Isabel Van den Broeck ( Isabel.VandenBroeck@soc.kuleuven.be ) holds a master degree in Industrial Psychology and is also a postgraduate in Computer Science. Before becoming a researcher at the Centre for Usability Research (IBBT-CUO) she was a project leader and business analist OZ and was commercial advisor in the financial sector. Wendy Van den Broeck (wendy.van.den.broeck@vub.ac.be )graduated as a Licentiate in Communication Studies and also obtained a Postgraduate diploma. At the moment she works as a researcher at IBBT-SMIT where she is involved in several projects concerning user aspects of ICTs. She is also preparing a PhD on iDTV user aspects. Nina Wakeford is Reader in Sociology in the Department of Sociology at Surrey and directs the Incubator for Critical Inquiry Into Technology and Ethnography (INCITE) research centre (www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/incite). She does research on gendered uses of the Internet, the sociology of sexuality, in particular the use of queer theory, and the potential intersections between such critical cultural theory, innovative ethnography and design practice. She has used the 73 bus route to try and understand notions of mobility and ubiquity in computing, and has just begun a project on European cultures of art and design and their relation to values about technology. Patricia Wall is a research scientist and manager of the Work Practice & Technology group at Xerox. Previously she was a user interface designer for advanced technology development. Her current research interests include application of ethnographic methods in services contexts, ethnography guided innovation, and graphics-based representation of work practices. Tim Wallack Tim's expertise is in understanding people and developing insights that satisfy their needs, focus design efforts and help grow the client's business. In addition to his work with US and European companies, he has conducted fieldwork in China and Japan for programs ranging from product innovation to design language creation. He has served as a Director of Design Strategy and Consumer Insights for a number of top consultancies. Pamela Whitney is a senior user researcher in the Wells Fargo Internet Services Group's Customer Experience Research & Design team. Alexandra Zafiroglu (alexandra.c.zafiroglu@intel.com) is an anthropologist with Domestic Designs and Technologies Research, Intel Corporation, where she researches the complex relationships among people, spaces, and objects in domestic settings, and the kinds of experiences of technology that make sense in such spaces. She has a Ph.D. (2004) in anthropology from Brown University.

	Posters Genevieve Bell, Brooke Foucault, Todd Harple & Jay Melican “The Digital and the Divine: Snapshots of Technology in Spiritual Passages” Anxo Cereijo Roibas & Nina Sabnani “High Perceived Quality of Experience (PQoE) in Pervasive Interactive Multimedia Systems through Scenario Validation Enactments” Kenneth C. Erickson & Martin Høyem “Research Blogs for Team Ethnography: What Kind of Notes Are These?” Devesh Desai & Adison Supawatanakul “Disconnected: Life Without the Internet Exploring the Penetration of Internet in Every Life” Laura Forlano “Working on the Move: Flexible Work and the Role of Mobile and Wireless Technology” image not available Marlo R. Jenkins “From Fear to Faith: Spiritualizing Entrepreneurship by Design” Gavin Johnston “Ethnography VS Ethnographic Techniques” Emma Rose, Beth Kolko & Carolyn Wei “Understanding Information-Seeking Behaviors and Informal Social Networks in Kyrgyzstan: A Design Ethnography for Mobile Social Software” image not available Henry B. "Hank" Strub & Jeff Mosenkis “The Co-evolution of Technology and Work Roles: How CT Scanners Have Shaped the Departments That Use Them” k. anderson, r . de paula & m. mohammed “AK47 Shoots Down PC - ROI for ROW”