#thick data

[kenyatta]

Society and institutions both normalize. They’re always trying to figure out how to fit people and things and ideas into boxes. That’s essentially what quantitative data does. It gets rid of context to normalize a data set to make it fit into a set of numbers. Institutions do that too. They take a set of things that are fuzzy, like human interactions, and they try to put them in a box. There can be a lot of value in normalizing, but it can also be really dangerous, especially when you don’t stop to ask: why are we doing this? What happens to the things that don’t fit in the boxes? What happens to the people who don’t fit into the institutions or who aren’t represented in the data set. Are they made invisible? Who and what is being excluded?

People Are Your Data: an interview with Tech Ethnographer Tricia Wang

[emvisual]

Tricia Wang sobre el Big Data y el Thick Data

[thinkfanengagement]

Here's a new piece on the over-reliance and overuse of Big Data in Fan Engagement in football, and how Thick Data has to become the norm. Some serious inspiration from Tech Ethnographer, Tricia Wang. Enjoy! http://faninsights.co.uk/insights/fan-engagement-fails-with-big-data …

[ritualanalysis]

Thickening Research

Have patience. At its best, Thick Data runs like molasses in January. At times, technology can be used to enrich the process, but it can never be allowed to replace the human interaction, even when, functionally speaking, such interaction seems pointless. Because Thick Research is open-ended and observational, there must always remain in its practice sufficient opportunities for mistakes, misunderstandings, and wasted time, because it is through such apparent dead ends that spontaneous discoveries take place. Technological data collection techniques, though they are efficient at providing answers to research questions, reach the target too quickly. They’re like bullet trains, traveling through tunnels under scenic byways, delivering us to our destinations rapidly, but missing the point of the journey.

[dumbshort-blog]

[afluxstate]

Is social media making or breaking the food industry? @theDrum #LikeMinds #SMWLDN

I think it’s almost guaranteed that we’ll hear a number of similar themes being discussed in The Drum-sponsored Like Minds...

How food brands are searching the souls about their purpose, and the rise of Thick not just Big Data.

[youexdee]

The Power of 'Thick' Data

Brilliant insight into why qualitative user research is key to creating a successful product.

Article link here.

Excerpt

"Coloplast's research and development team was focused on solving the problem of "leakage" in the stoma bags... The general assumption across the industry was that better adhesives equaled less leakage.

[But after extensive user research...]

...What dawned on the Coloplast team was that the adhesive wasn't the problem. Rather, what caused the dreaded leakages was a lack of fit to the patients' diverse and changing bodies. Many patients gained or lost a lot of weight following their surgery or developed scar tissue that made it difficult to keep the stoma bags in place.

Coloplast used this insight to create three different product categories for body types. Not only did this help stop the leakage problem, it gave the company a clear perspective and direction for future innovation."