Elaine Ann and Julien Cayla are organizing a meetup on anthrodesigners in Kong Kong on May 22nd at 8pm at Hyde. Anyone interested in user experience, design, anthropology, business and the cross-pollination between these different fields is welcome to join us.

Venue: Hyde Bar-2-3/F, 3RD FLOOR, Lyndhurst Building, Lyndhurst Terrace, Central–

Time: 22nd May at 8:00 pm. Reservation under the name of Elaine Ann

http://www.openrice.com/english/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=47968

About the organizers:

Elaine Ann is the founder of Kaizor Innovation, a strategic innovation consulting company uniquely positioned to help develop appropriate innovation strategies, research and designs for the emerging China market.

Born and raised in Hong Kong and having lived in the U.S. for 12 years, her bi-cultural and bilingual background help clients obtain unique insights and bridge behavioral, cultural, social and political differences between markets. She is well versed and can write in both Chinese (PuTongHua & Cantonese) and English. Elaine brings to Asia processes of new product innovation and user-centered design methodologies.

Prior to moving back to Hong Kong, she lived in the United States from 1990-2002. While in the U.S., she worked as a director in the Fitch Interaction group in San Francisco and also at Razorfish and Henry Dreyfuss Associates in New York. Her past clients include Hewlett-Packard, Philips, Kodak, Charles Schwab, Federal Reserve, Intuit, SRI (Stanford Research Institute), Nissan, Fujitsu, PCCW (Pacific Century Cyber Works), Lan Kwai Fong, iMerchants etc.

Elaine graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where she earned her Master’s degree in Interaction Design and her undergraduate degree in Visual Communications and Business Management (minor).

Julien Cayla is Assistant Professor of Marketing at Nanyang Business School, Singapore, Visiting Professor at Euromed Management, Marseille, and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Asian Consumer Insight in Singapore.

Professor Cayla received his PhD from the University of Colorado (Boulder, United States) where he majored in marketing and minored in cultural anthropology. His dissertation on the Indian advertising world received several national awards, including the MSI Alden Clayton Award and the Sheth Award.

In his research, he tries to integrate anthropological theories and methodologies to the study of marketing in the global marketplace. His work has been published in outlets such as the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of International Marketing and the International Marketing Review. His edited book titled Inside Marketing was recently published by Oxford University Press. His work on ethnography in the corporate world is forthcoming at the Journal of Marketing.

Title: Ethnography in Business: Applications to New Product Development

Date: 27 March 2013
Time: 5.30pm – 8.30pm
Venue: Potential – Floor 13, Connexis (North tower), Fusionopolis (MRT Circle Line: one-north)
(RSVP by: 22 March 2013 to Norfadhilah at awangnb@i2r.a-star.edu.sg )

Programme
5.30pm – Registration
6.00pm –  Ethnography in Business in Asia: Some stories of use – by Juliana Koh and Manisha Dikshit
7.00pm – Refreshment
7.30pm – Ethnographic Films and Business – Julien Cayla
8.30pm – End

Abstract
Over the last few years, new markets and consumer segments have opened in Asia and digitisation has changed existing cultures rapidly. Corporates in Asia have become interested in the idea of using Ethnography to understand their users and relevant cultures. This presentation shares stories from the field and our experience as researchers using Ethnography for commercial organisations. The presentation talks about the processes, methods, tools and outcomes of using Ethnography. It discusses the benefits of this as well as the constraints, challenges and misconceptions in the area.

About the Speakers
Manisha’s love for looking into the real lives of people and being touched by the humanity of day to day life is what has kept her interested in the commercial world of Qualitative research for more than 20 years.  Her aim has been to tell the stories of consumers to inspire brands to bring about change. Manisha specialises in research in the early stages of product development and has been involved in new product development, positioning and consumer profiling work across Asia Pacific and Middle East region.

Juliana started her journey as researcher as a hard core Econometrician.  By chance she was drawn into the Qualitative world and became intrigued by the emotional and psychological aspects of consumer behaviour and cultures. Since then she has been immersed in understanding consumers, what drives them and uses this understanding to provoke and inspire clients and be a catalyst for change.

Manisha and Juliana are the founders of Consumer Faces Pte.Ltd.

Julien Cayla is Assistant Professor of Marketing at Nanyang Business School and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Asian Consumer Insight in Singapore. Professor Cayla received his PhD from the University of Colorado (Boulder, United States) where he majored in marketing and minored in cultural anthropology. Before joining NTU, Julien was Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the Australian School of Business (Sydney, Australia). In his research, he tries to integrate anthropological theories and methodologies to the study of marketing in the global marketplace.

RSVP required by 22 March 2013. For more information, please see http://hfe.i2r.a-star.edu.sg

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For the first anthrodesign meetup in Singapore, 16 of us met for a drink at Mr Punch, on the rooftop of the mint toys museum. A great mix of people from academia, industry and government attended. We had people from the Ministry of Manpower, the Prime Minister’s Office, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, MIT, NTU, Flamingo, Consumer Faces, Swinburne University, A*/Infocomm.

Plans were made to meet every two months or so, with the next event to be held at A* in March and another event in May at Flamingo.

For those of you who missed the event, here are some of the pictures we took: