Innovation Interface: Technology on a Human Scale

Join us as we welcome Nina Wakeford Director of INCITE as she discusses Enthnography, Design and Studio Sociology, Buses and Bikes

Throughout the year, Innovation Interface aims to gather academics, policy makers, entrepreneurs and business people to kick start the debate between social science and innovation and to forge alliances leading to action through a series of talks about social science, design and innovation.

More about Innovation Interface:

Social Science and Innovation- could these seemingly strange bedfellows be the answer to connecting the need of the user to the innovation and creativity of the technology industry?

Many of the world's leading technology companies and science institutions have already discovered the way forward for innovation has as much to do with the intangibles of the human experience as it does with algorithms, chips and design. Using both sociologists and anthropologists, corporations are increasingly turning to designers who combine the insights of social scientists with scientific knowledge to transform creativity and research into innovation. Will emo-engineers and anthro-technologists be the buzzwords of the twenty-first century? We invite you to join the debate and listen as this line-up of world leading thinkers and practitioners discuss their international experiences and practices of innovation, design and social science.

More about Nina Wakerford: 

Nina Wakeford founded the research group INCITE in 2001 at the University of Surrey, moving to Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2007. She edited the report Innovation through people-centred design: Lessons from the USA for the UK Government's Department of Trade and Industry.  She has worked extensively alongside designers and engineers in industry and university settings. She is currently developing courses in Studio Sociology at MA and PhD levels. INCITE has worked with researchers with backgrounds in sociology, anthropology, design, engineering, fine art and art history.

Nina will talk broadly about the lessons of recent years about the ways social science work can be harnessed in innovation, and outline specific examples of 'studio sociology'. In 2001, INCITE began its first collaboration with Intel Research, Oregon. The Intel researchers were interested in how space and place in London changed with new technologies, in particular mobile phones - much more of a novelty in the US than the UK at that time. Instead of doing a conventional interview survey on use of mobile devices, INCITE followed a mobile object which cross-cut the city: the number 73 bus. The study of the 73 bus produced not only novel objects and experiences about the city, but also insights into ways of working at the boundaries of academia and industry. Ethnographic work in hi-tech corporations has expectations of translation mechanisms such as the experience model, the persona or the powerpoint set; this research suggests a new model - the installation as part of 'studio sociology'. A more recent INCITE industrial collaboration, on bike messengers and bike commuters, was turned into an installation of photos, videos and objects to explore the temporal aspects of urban mobility.  

Coordinated by Adam Drazin and Simon Roberts (Twitter: @si_roberts)

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