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1. I’m so grateful to @tristanharris @aza being vulnerable enough to suggest a new field to study human + tech. It just goes to show there’s tons of confusion around the role of research & insights in industry - which is the topic of my upcoming talk at @MindtheProduct.
2. @zeynep is right about the willful blindness of industry tech & @BostonJoan have pointed to entire field of STS - BUT i have sympathy for @tristanharris @aza cuz i see tons of confusion on several fronts between industry & academia that can possibly make even well meaning...
3. ... tech folks feel like a new area of study is needed. One of the big problems is how research is manifested in industry under confusing fields of UX, CX, design research -as @lifewinning noted there is def a trend with throwing an X in industry to make a field sound TOUGH
4. I think academia has a lot a work to do to make their research ACTIONABLE by industry - likewise I think industry has a lot of work to do to learn from academia. This is why orgs like @datasociety that are breaking this binary down are so important
5. I mean it’s super easy to come down hard on @tristanharris @aza for being 2 dudes suggesting something that makes a lot of us who have done the research be like WTF don’t you see the shit I’ve done - but really I think there is a much bigger fight to be fought
6. The fight inside industry is to remove humans from the loop - and I’m willing to do whatever it takes, even if it means rebranding qual research. I have tons of academics write to me that they were DISMAYED & UPSET I created a new term, #thickdata for ...
7.. all the long-standing qual methods of ethnography, sociology, anthropology. But I’d rather not spend time defending the value of the name of the field/method & do what it takes to make it digestable to newbies or even people who are flat out resistant.
8... one of the things that’s happened in all of this confusion is that ANYONE thinks they can do customer facing research now - which on one is AWESOME that everyone thinks they can talk to customers, I’ve seen this happen w/ the field of #productmanagement
9.. @mattlemay’s book covers the 5 archetypes of PMs, with the “Hero PM” as one who also thinks they can gather #thickdata faster & better than insights people. I’ll be talking at @MindtheProduct with Matt about the upside & downsides of this amazon.com/Product-Manage…
10. I am delighted when anyone, from PMs to engineers, talk to customers & use design research or #jobstobedone, but my concern is when they lack the data literacy & contextual awareness of when to leverage these methods, when to collaborate w/ researchers.
11. There’s a lot of cherry picking of methods and creation of more silos as a result. I hear more arguments abt methods when that is the least important part to discuss - we should be aligning on the business question & what we at @suddencompass call the “human question” -
12. ...that is translating the business problem to a question that frames it for humans. After aligning on the biz & human questions, it is research’s role to navigate the tension between the two - cuz they are often opposing.
13. The best strategic researchers I’ve worked w/ & hired know that this tension exists & know it is their duty to bring the voice of the humans to the biz table & construct a biz rationale for the recommended action.
14. So I’ll publish a cohesive set of thoughts abt this after my talk at @MindtheProduct but in the meantime here is one action i recommend for you anyone who wants to better understand how to make orgs truly human-centric - read @mattlemay’s book amazon.com/Agile-Everybod…
15. @mattlemay has shared a lot of learnings based off of our collective trials and errors of making human insights actionable in a tech-centric data driven world. He brilliantly unifies #designthinking #agile #lean in this one image 
16. He explains what @zeynep was saying - that companies keep doing the same shit & willfully ignore customers. Here’s his medium article version of his book medium.com/on-human-centr…
17. So @tristanharris @aza take a look at the links above, plus @markusgrupp ‘s suggestion of @UW_CSTV - & all the readings suggests by & works of @zeynep @BostonJoan @xeeliz @landay @sladner & more - & then come back to us w/ ur new revised assessment if we need a new field
18. and then maybe you'll be forgiven on twitter 😂
19. but seriously my academic friends - I am one of you and one of the industry too - you guys have got to get a few things - stop giving so many fucks over citations, respect, and theory. No one gives a shit unless you make it actionable.
20. I didn't say citations, respect, and theory don't matter. Just sayin we got to do the work to make it actionable.
21. One tiny public example I love is if you peruse through @mattlemay's #productmanagement book - you'll notice something right away w/ all his use of pronouns & drawings. These design decisions matter. Imagine what happens inside our clients' offices. amazon.com/Product-Manage…
22. Everyday brilliant designers, PMs, engineers who are doused in liberal arts, ethics, and morality are fighting a good fight of representation. And they need to do in a way that is simple and actionable. Simplicity is not stupidity.
23. Some academics dismiss the difficulty of reducing actionable insights into 1 sentence or a couple of slides. As someone who has written papers (long ass ones) I can tell you it's not any easier. It's is a different set of fucking hard skills. I am all d
24. I am all day drawing upon Deleuze Foucault Weber Durkheim Latour Mead Castells but it's hard to NOT mention them at all. seriously. it's harder to NOT cite them and to STILL get the same fucking idea across.
25. also one more thing - @tristanharris @aza as leaders of @HumaneTech_ You've got a lot power and privilige to NOT repeat problems, so puhhlease don't center yourselves in your efforts to make tech more humane. I hope you can take all this public help to ❤️ in ur actions.
26. @ndhanthro & I created a slack just to discuss these very matters of doing qual research in industry on the topics of humans+tech - we have over 50 channels & local meets up and 2000+ participants. Sign up and join. ethnographymatters.net/blog/2016/01/2…
