On Wed, Jan 27, 2016 at 9:54 AM, Aaron Halfaker ahalfaker@wikimedia.org wrote:
I should add that the research-and-data team is also on board with this approach. Honestly, I think it's a little silly that we make the distinction between methodological expertise when we split the team up.
+1. I should have said "the research team", since we're really one big data-loving family.
But "thick data", come on. We can get a better term than that? How about "meaningful measurements"? Or we could just call it "competent application of methods".
Or just... "science" ;) I suspect "thick data" is an unfortunate consequence of an industry jargon arms race: researchers get listened to (not to mention hired) in our field if they characterize what they do as "big data", because that term is hot right now--even though it's really no more accurate or useful, as a term, than "Web 2.0" was when that was A Big Thing.
So some qual researchers feel having a catchy term of their own will make folks more likely to listen to them. I feel fortunate that at our organization, at least, I never feel like I need to use buzzwords in order to get PMs to take me seriously. \o/
J
-Aaron
On Wed, Jan 27, 2016 at 11:43 AM, Jonathan Morgan jmorgan@wikimedia.org wrote:
Thanks for sharing this, Asaf and Raul. The design research team is (obviously) onboard with this approach.
Related: here's a post on doing ethnographic work in a Wikipedia context, written for Medium by veteran Wikiresearcher Heather Ford: https://medium.com/ethnography-matters/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-participant...
Jonathan "I dearly miss my Nokia 925" Morgan
On Wed, Jan 27, 2016 at 6:04 AM, Toby Negrin tnegrin@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Asaf --
Thanks for sharing this. It's a good article and there's a lot to agree with. Certainly there's a clear need for both qualitative and quantitive research and figuring out how to combine them is a worthwhile challenge. A lot of modern productive development practices stress empathy, meeting users where they are along with big data and we're certainly aspiring to this level of work in the Reading team.
Where I think the Foundation and the Movement struggle is on the evaluation side and I don't think the article addresses this issue particularly well. Measuring the impact of non-profit work has always been challenging and will continue to be so. It's certainly true that the emphasis on big data has been less helpful here.
Finally, since I can't resist, Nokia failed because they didn't do ethnographic research on their existing users in Europe and North America, not potential users across the planet and missed the fact that people would be thrilled to trade in their candy-bar phones for fancy iphones and androids!
-Toby
On Wed, Jan 27, 2016 at 5:34 AM, Marcel Ruiz Forns <mforns@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Awesome reading, I liked it a lot. Thanks!
On Wed, Jan 27, 2016 at 9:34 AM, Asaf Bartov abartov@wikimedia.org wrote:
Estonian Wikipedian Raul Veede, User:Oop, asked to relay this link to "the metrics people", so I am sending it here and to the Community Engagement team at the Wikimedia Foundation.
https://medium.com/ethnography-matters/why-big-data-needs-thick-data-b4b3e75...
Cheers,
A.
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