UX Portfolio

To unravel cultures of exclusivity in the workplace and in the field as a whole, CultureEncode approaches the three aspects of any ED&I program as a cycle

As user experience research and design becomes a site for unparalleled innovation in tech, the field is revisiting the question of who participates in these studies, and how. We have figured out how to get into the mechanics of what makes our users tick; the challenge now is to reimagine the role of user to include those whose experience falls off the radar

All productive workplaces hope to foster genuine conversations about diversity and inclusion. All too often, though, these become stuck on the same setting: making sure workers avoid saying the wrong thing. How can we take diversity work a step beyond this and transform workplaces into sites of cross-cultural conversation and innovation?

Serving global markets requires intercultural knowledge for the sake of working efficiently, building positive longstanding partnerships with global entities that may work very differently form domestic ones, and avoiding ethical missteps that could lead to missed opportunties, or worse, bad publicity. 

In this post, I want to work through two case studies in global design thinking that can be valuable to the field of UX Research and Design--and to the broader climate of digital innovation that is sparking across industry today.

Anthropologists have, for centuries, attuned their work to understanding humans, how they organize into groups, and how they interact with and build out their environment to solve critical problems so that they can survive and flourish. We understand people, and we understand the material and technological world. User experience research, design thinking, global marketing, and diversifying the workplace–very different projects and processes– take on new dimensions when empowered by the insights cultural anthropology brings to the table.