Saturday,

November 9

8:30-5:00 pm

Check-in

RISD Auditorium Lobby info

Online pre-registration is required for tutorials—there is no on-site registration.

Drop by at any time to get your badge and conference agenda; you don’t need a confirmation code or receipt. If you need info or assistance at any time, this is the place.

9:00-4:00 pm

Graduate Colloquium

Washington Building Room 302

9:00-4:00 pm

Tutorials

Sessions
*Tutorials registration is closed. No on-site registration for tutorials.
*Please arrive early to check in at the RISD Auditorium Lobby before going to your tutorial classroom.

9:00 am–12:00 pm
•  Ethics in Data-Driven Industries College Building 412
•  Information Design for Ethnographic Analysis College Building 442
•  Managing Resistance to Change in Your Organization College Building 346
•  Advancing Your Agile Research Program Washington Building 310
•  Participatory Visual Research College Building 410

12:00–1:00 pm
Lunch for all tutorial attendees & instructors—Market Square Tent

1:00–4:00 pm
•  Cultivating Research Capacity as Organizational Strategy College Building 442
•  Making Video Ethnography Work Washington Building 310
•  Sketchnoting College Building 412
•  Observational Research & Human Agency College Building 410
•  Making Sense—Leading Teams Through Synthesis College Building 346

4:30-5:45 pm

Reconceptualizing Privacy

RISD Auditorium

Panel
Algorithmic systems are increasingly integrated into the physical and digital infrastructures of our lives. The borders of privacy are being pushed and redefined, provoking new debate about what privacy is. All corporations claim privacy is important, but what does that mean? Panelists will explore what privacy might look like or mean when individuals are tied into multiple networks, both human and AI.

Moderator:
ken anderson, Principal Researcher, Intel Corporation

Panelists:
Liz Keneski, Head of Privacy Research, Facebook Inc.
Peter Levin, Principal Researcher, Autodesk
Elena O’Curry, Senior User Researcher, Uber
Jeff Sokolov, Designer & Researcher, IBM Watson Health

More about panels & panelists

6:00-9:00 pm

Welcome Reception

Kick off EPIC by connecting with people and art at the RISD Museum. Collections explore diverse cultures, makers, and relationships across communities.

Sunday,

November 10

8:00-5:30 pm

Check-in, Book Exhibit, Jobs Board

RISD Auditorium Lobby info

Check-in: Drop by to get your badge and conference agenda; you don’t need a confirmation code or receipt. If you need info or assistance at any time, this is the place.

Book Exhibit: EPIC Members have written some of the most important books in our field (and others!), and you can browse them at leisure. If you have a book that should be on display, please tell us.

Jobs Board: Nothing like paper & a board to recruit at a gathering like EPIC (and post to the digital version here)

8:00-9:00 am

Continental Breakfast

Market Square Tent

9:00-9:30 am

Welcome

RISD Auditorium

9:30-10:30 am

Keynote Address

RISD Auditorium Sareeta Amrute

Sareeta is Director of Research at Data & Society and Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her research is focused on the integration of humans and technologies, particularly how race and class are revisited and remade in sites of new economy work such as coding and software economies. More…
10:30-11:00 am

Coffee

Market Square Tent

10:30-6:00 pm

Gallery

Illustration Studies Building

Installations
Gallery installations evoke multimodal experiences of ethnographic practice—written, oral, visual, three-dimensional, interactive, critical, reflective. Read descriptions of each installation.

The Ethno-graphic Sensibility
Jamie McPike (Instagram) & Diana Graizbord (University of Georgia)

Socially Informed Policy and Planning for AV Mobility in Rhode Island
Kate Fisher (3×3)

Agency via Avatar Emotions in Virtual Reality
Ayfer Gokalp (Facebook) & Jacqueline Pospisil (Oculus)

Office Humour
James O’Neill, Francesco Pini & Frauke Hein (Fjord)

What Are Memories Made of?
Hema Malini Waghray (marginaliaa.com)

Debris
Daria Loi (Mozilla) & Heather McGeachy (DreamOften)

Interactive Storytelling: Bringing Personas to Life through an AR/VR Experience
Idil Berkan, Amy Lasater-Wille & Alan Finch (Oliver Wyman Studio)

Density Done Right: Co-designing Walkable, Sustainable, and Equitable Communities through Digital and Analog Mediums of Public Engagement
Brian Strawn (University of Hawaii), Karla Sierralta (University of Hawaii), Alisa Weinstein (Google) & Rebecca Buck (Forge Studio)

Vær: On Place, Weather, Being, and Agency
Erica Kowsz (University of Massachusetts) & Hunter Styles

hi how r u: A Toolkit for Digital Expression
Erin Ryan (Carnegie Mellon University)

Where Does Cancer Live Now?
Jacob McAuliffe & Rebekah Park (ReD Associates)

11:00-12:30 pm

Everyday Automation

RISD Auditorium PechaKucha & Papers

PechaKucha curated by Elizabeth Anderson-Kempe
Papers curated by Ellie Rennie

Living amongst AI: Agency of the Household Ethnography’s Role in Seeing the AI’s Blind Spots (PechaKucha), LaiYee Ho (Delve)

AI Among Us: Agency in a World of Cameras and Recognition Systems (Paper), ken anderson (Intel); Carl DiSalvo (Georgia Institute of Technology); Maria Bezaitis (Intel); Sue Faulkner (Intel)

Believe in A.I.: Will You Pray for a Chatbot? (PechaKucha), Andre Torales

Calibrating Agency: Human-Autonomy Teaming and The Future of Work Amid Highly-Automated Systems (Paper), Laura Cesafsky (Alliance Innovation Lab – Silicon Valley); Erik Stayton (MIT); Melissa Cefkin (Alliance Innovation Lab – Silicon Valley)

Robots and the Fallacy of Agency (PechaKucha), Stewart Allen (Fuse Foresight)

12:30-2:00 pm

Lunch

Market Square Tent

12:45-1:45 pm

Salons—Sponsored by Steelcase

Sessions
*Salon registration is closed. No on-site registration.

• When Not to Design AI (Washington Rm 128A)
• Honoring the Unforeseen (Washington Rm 128B)
• Speaking Truths to Power (Washington Rm 302)
• Supporting Advanced Practitioners (Washington Rm 310)
• Agency through Appropriation (College Building Rm 346)
• Failing Fast—Adapting to Agile (College Building Rm 410)
• Design, Ethnography & Foresight (College Building Rm 412)
• Intersectional Design Research (College Building Rm 424)
• Getting “Unstuck in the Middle” with Ethics (College Building Rm 442)

2:00-3:30 pm

Film

RISD Auditorium Screenings

Food for Thought: The Path to Food Security in Newark, NJ
Ruchika Muchhala (Third Kulture Media)

The Learning Library: Using Ethnographic Film as an Organizational Change Tool by Scaling Human Insights Across a National Preschool System
Hal Phillips & Meg Kinney (Bad Babysitter)

Agency in a Future Smart Home
Nick Agafonoff (Real Ethnography)

Clyde in Mulberry
Allegra Oxborough (Aero Creative LLC)

Read more about the films and filmmakers

3:30-4:00 pm

Coffee

Market Square Tent

4:00-5:30 pm

Agency & Innovation

RISD Auditorium Panel

Robotics, machine learning, and other technologies are provoking new hopes and fears about human agency. Tropes of the charismatic lone innovator, whether hero or villain, are also starting to lose popular currency. When we acknowledge that the agents of the built world are not just people who call themselves “innovators” but are made up of many kinds of people, and physical materials, new questions arise. How do issues of responsibility, accountability, attribution, and even regulation get solved in situations of distributed agency? What new stories about agency need to be told?

Moderator:
Dawn Nafus, Senior Researcher, Intel Labs

Panelists:
Melissa Cefkin, Principal Researcher, Alliance Innovation Lab Silicon Valley
Michael Littman, Professor of Computer Science & Co-Director of the Humanity Centered Robotics Initiative, Brown University
Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, MIT
Heli Rantavuo, Senior Insights Manager, Growth Opportunities Mission, Markets Business Unit, Spotify

More about panels & panelists

Monday,

November 11

8:00-5:00 pm

Info Desk, Book Exhibit, Jobs Board

RISD Auditorium Lobbyinfo

Info Desk: If you need info or assistance at any time, this is the place.

Book Exhibit: EPIC Members have written some of the most important books in our field (and others!), and you can browse them at leisure. If you have a book that should be on display, please tell us.

Jobs Board: Nothing like paper & a board to recruit at a gathering like EPIC (and post to the digital version here)

8:00-9:00 am

Continental Breakfast

Market Square TentPortfolio Review Group

Whether we’re on the job market, advancing internally in our organizations, or pitching to clients, we all need to be able to present our skills and accomplishments effectively. This breakfast session is opportunity to get thoughtful, candid feedback on your portfolio, resume, or case study in a facilitated group. Not a recruiting event. More info here.
9:00-4:00 pm

Gallery

Illustration Studies Building

Installations
Gallery installations evoke multimodal experiences of ethnographic practice—written, oral, visual, three-dimensional, interactive, critical, reflective. Read descriptions of each installation.

The Ethno-graphic Sensibility
Jamie McPike (Instagram) & Diana Graizbord (University of Georgia)

Socially Informed Policy and Planning for AV Mobility in Rhode Island
Kate Fisher (3×3)

Agency via Avatar Emotions in Virtual Reality
Ayfer Gokalp (Facebook) & Jacqueline Pospisil (Oculus)

Office Humour
James O’Neill, Francesco Pini & Frauke Hein (Fjord)

What Are Memories Made of?
Hema Malini Waghray (marginaliaa.com)

Debris
Daria Loi (Mozilla) & Heather McGeachy (DreamOften)

Interactive Storytelling: Bringing Personas to Life through an AR/VR Experience
Idil Berkan, Amy Lasater-Wille & Alan Finch (Oliver Wyman Studio)

Density Done Right: Co-designing Walkable, Sustainable, and Equitable Communities through Digital and Analog Mediums of Public Engagement
Brian Strawn (University of Hawaii), Karla Sierralta (University of Hawaii), Alisa Weinstein (Google) & Rebecca Buck (Forge Studio)

Vær: On Place, Weather, Being, and Agency
Erica Kowsz (University of Massachusetts) & Hunter Styles

hi how r u: A Toolkit for Digital Expression
Erin Ryan (Carnegie Mellon University)

Where Does Cancer Live Now?
Jacob McAuliffe & Rebekah Park (ReD Associates)

9:00-10:30 am

Concurrent Sessions

Negotiating Agency—PechaKucha & Papers

Metcalf Auditorium, Chace Center

PechaKucha Curated by Bridget Monahan (Google)
Papers: Curated by Abbas Jaffer (Facebook)

Data Walks into a Bar: A Love Story (PechaKucha)
Tabitha Steager (Workday)

Listening through Their Ears: Developing Inclusive Research Methods to Co-Create with Blind Participants (Paper)
Gregory Weinstein (Uber)

Contextual Research in Prisons: Moving People Safely (PechaKucha)
Ruben Perez Huidobro (Shopify)

The Adaptation of Everyday Work: How “Endangered” Middle-Men Are Evolving the Way They Think about and Perform Their Jobs to Keep Pace with Automation-Driven Disruption (Paper)
Millie P. Arora, Morgan Ramsey-Elliot, Tamara Moellenberg & Claire Straty (ReD Associates)

Change Agent: Lessons on Power and Failure from Eight Years of Systems Research and Policy Design (PechaKucha)
Chelsea Mauldin (Public Policy Lab)

User Agency in UX Research—Case Studies

Washington Building—Auditorium

Curated by Eva Caspary (Insight Culture)

‘My AI’ versus ‘the Company AI’: How Knowledge Workers Conceptualize Forms of AI Assistance in the Workplace
Nanna Sandberg (Stripe Partners); Martin Ortlieb (Google); Tom Hoy (Stripe Partners)

Driving Chatbot Product Vision through User Research
Molly Mahar & Gregory A. Bennett (Salesforce)

The Human Agency Driverless Cars Must Preserve
Eliot Salandy Brown, Kathryn Osborn & Nelson Saldaña (ReD Associates)

Using Ethnography and Narrative Analysis to Uncover Customer Agency: Intrepid Travel’s Online Booking Project
Alice K. Watson (Intrepid Group)

More Than A Robot: Designing For Human Exploration On Mars
Paige Pritchard (Carnegie Mellon)

Agency & the Climate Emergency—Panel

Washington Building—Gathering Space

What is ethnographers’ role in dealing with catastrophic climate crisis? Should we be exploring people’s experiences of change, trying to use our insights to help drive individual and collective action at scale through organizations, or helping civil society deal with the consequences? This panel will examine some of these tensions and responsibilities, and the value that ethnographic practice can bring to one of the biggest issues for our collective futures.

Moderator:
Dan Lockton, Director of the Imaginaries Lab & Chair of Design Studies, Carnegie Mellon University

Panelists:
Makalé Faber Cullen, Urban Soils Fellow, Anthropocene, Urban Soils Institute
Györgyi Gálik, Lead Advisor, Architecture and Built Environment Team, Design Council; Royal College of Art
Mike Youngblood, Principal, Youngblood Group

More about panels & panelists

10:30-11:00 am

Coffee

Market Square Tent

11:00-12:30 pm

Concurrent Sessions

Designing for Agency—PechaKucha & Papers

Metcalf Auditorium, Chace Center

PechaKucha curated by April Jeffries (Ipsos)
Papers curated by Dan Lockton (Carnegie Mellon School of Design)

From ‘Cool Science’ to Changing the World: The Opportunity to Support Pre-startup Science Commercialisation through Ethnography and Human-Centred Design (Paper)
Simon Pulman-Jones (Emergence Now) & Amy Weatherup (AJM Enterprises)

Center Frame: Agency in the Lives of Researchers (PechaKucha)
Brandy Parker (IA Collaborative)

(Fr)agile Objects: Thinking Scrum through Post-It Notes (Paper)
Isabel Lafuente & Wilson Prata (SIDIA – Samsung)

Remembering the Blister (PechaKucha)
Marise Phillips (Wells Fargo)

Getting Machine-Learning Algorithms to Think Like Ethnographers: A Case Study on Using ‘Hybrid Ethnography’ to Inform Cognitive Science and Machine Learning for Context-Aware Technology (Paper)
Eryn Whitworth (Facebook Technologies) & Maria Cury (ReD Associates)

Self Ethnography: Or, How I Earned My Berkeley Citizenship in an Ethnographic Journey through the Crunchy Granola and Scientific (PechaKucha)
Beth Schwindt (AutoDesk/Building Connected)

Agency of the Affected—Case Studies

Washington Building—Auditorium

Curated by Thomas Lee (UC Berkeley)

“Can Any Hairdresser Fix a Car?” Mechanics Seeking Agency in Automated Car Diagnostic Contexts, and How Observing Agency Can Help Designing a Car Diagnostic Tool
Chloé Huie Brickert & Guillaume Montagu (_unknowns)

Getting Us There: Ride Hailing Systems from the Drivers’ Perspectives
Keith S. Karn (Human Factors in Context LLC) & William E Hutson (IBM)

Designing for Dynamics of Agency with Homeless New Yorkers
Natalia Radywyl (Public Policy Lab)

Bringing the Security Analyst into the Loop: From Human-Computer Interaction to Human-Computer Collaboration
Liz Rogers (IBM)

Boundary Crossings: Collaborative Robots and Human Workers
Bruce Pietrykowski (University of Michigan-Dearborn); Mike Folster (Behco)

Representation & Representative-ness—Panel

Washington Building—Gathering Space

As practitioners in industry and the public sector, when we present our research and recommendations to clients and communities we are often asked, “Is your data representative?” “Are you representing our constituents, consumers, or users?” As ethnographers, we ask, “What does ‘representation’ mean, in which contexts?” This panel brings together practitioners working across different sectors and industries (health, finance, media, education) to discuss representation and “representativeness” in their research and work. Read the full description.

Moderator:
Donna Lanclos, Anodyne Anthropology LLC

Panelists:
Autumn Sanders Foster, Founder, Quire Consulting
Amber Hampton Greene, Experience Research & Service Design, Cityblock Health
Jordan Kraemer, Research Associate, Implosion Labs, LLC
Ruchika Muchhala, Consultant/Filmmaker, Third Kulture Media

More about panels & panelists

12:30-2:00 pm

Networking Lunch—Sponsored by IBM

Info

Two options for lunch today!

Networking Lunch Sponsored by IBM
Washington Building—Gathering Space
This semi-structured event is designed to foster connections across the spectrum of our community. Our networking coordinators will arrange you in small lunch groups to discuss a topics and challenges in ethnographic practice—or follow the conversations wherever they go.

Lunch Buffet
Market Square Tent
Plenty of tables and space to schedule your own lunch meetings, open your laptop, or just see who’s around and take lunch on your own terms.

2:00-3:30 pm

Concurrent Sessions

Locating Agency—PechaKucha & Papers

Metcalf Auditorium, Chase Center

PechaKucha curated by Chris Golias (Google)
Papers curated by Tania Lewis (RMIT University)

Ethnographic ‘Weirdness’: Attending to Indicators of the Unfamiliar (PechaKucha)
Charley Scull (Filament Insight & Innovation)

Abiding by Invisible Road Rules in the Field: Using ANT for CTF (Paper)
Amity Ballantyne Latham, Keir Reeves & John McDonald (Federation University Australia)

Nangi Village: A Story of Collective Agency in the Mountains of Nepal (PechaKucha)
Emelia Rallapalli (Pebble Strategy)

Designing Queer Love: An Ethnographic Study of Dating App Producers in Urban India (Paper)
Vishnupriya Das (University of Michigan)

Out to Dry: Change and Agency Across Urban China (PechaKucha)
Zach Hyman (EPAM Continuum)

“The Change before Behaviour: Closing the Value-Action Gap Using a Digital Social Companion” (Paper)
Gyorgyi Galik (Royal College of Art)

Agency in/through Partnership—Case Studies

Washington Building—Auditorium

Curated by Patricia Sunderland (Cultural Research & Analysis Inc)

Increasing Perceived Self-Agency in Human-AI Interactions: Learnings from Piloting a Voice User Interface with Driver-Partners on a Ridesharing Platform
Jake Silva (Uber Technologies Inc.)

Speculative Design within Corporate Realities
Megan M Prescott & Ben Kuester (Allstate)

Weighing Decisions in Monitoring and Evaluation of Clean Cookstoves
Jennifer Ventrella, Erin Peiffer, Nordica MacCarty & Shaozeng Zhang (Oregon State University)

Caregiver/Family Agency: Confidence, Play, Familiarity, and Passion in a Healthcare System
Adaheid L. Mestad & Amin Mojtahedi (HGA)

Educating the Educators: An Entire Franchise Preschool System Embraces Ethnographic Insights to Improve Brand Experience and Drive Growth
Meg Kinney & Hal Phillips (Bad Babysitter Productions)

Diversity & Inclusion World Cafe

Market Square Tent

Facilitators: Tamara Hale & Sam Ladner (Workday)

World Cafe is a collaborative participatory design method for hosting group dialogue. Come to this drop-in café to sit down, enjoy a refreshment with other attendees, and discuss how we as a community understand diversity and inclusion. Insights will be synthesized and shared back to the EPIC community to help us shape and advance diversity & inclusion goals.

3:30-4:00 pm

Coffee

Market Square Tent

4:00-5:00 pm

Concurrent Sessions

Automating Ethnography—Papers

RISD Auditorium

Curated by Sakari Tamminen (Gemic)

Designing Good Jobs: The Ethnography of Work and Data-Driven Systems
Marta Cuciurean-Zapan (IDEO)

Agency-Enhancing Automations in Consulting: Pathways for Anthropology and AI to Prioritize Contextual Automations
Cengiz Cemaloglu (ReD Associates); Jasmine Chia (Boston Consulting Group); Joshua Tam (IBM)

Supporting Real-Time Contextual Inquiry Through Sensor Data
Katerina Gorkovenko (University of Edinburgh); Dave Murray-Rust (University of Edinburgh); Daniel J. Burnett (Lancaster University); James K. Thorp (Lancaster University); Daniel Richards (Lancaster University)

Expanding Ethnographic Agencies—PechaKucha

Metcalf Auditorium, Chace Center

Curated by Alexandra Mack (Ad Hoc) & Emma Saunders (Empathy)

Creating Agency: On What Ethnography Can Learn from Storytelling
Anna Zavyalova

Creative Photography through Ethnographic Research
Gabriela Alves de Oliveira (INSITUM)

“Resistance is Possible”: The Ethnography of Roleplaying
Nathan LeBlanc (Scoop)

Borders and Walls: What Is the Agency of Architects in Geopolitical Conflicts?
Ane Gonzalez Lara (Pratt Institute)

Digital Selves and Distributed Agency: Redefining the Subject of Ethnography
Gunes Kocabag

Rebooting Literacy: Digital Literacy and Human Agency
Shubhangi Athalye & Stuart Henshall (Convo Research & Strategy Pvt Ltd)

5:15-6:15 pm

Keynote Address

RISD Auditorium

Zach Lieberman
Zach is an artist, researcher and educator. He creates artwork through writing software; is a co-creator of openFrameworks, an open source C++ toolkit for creative coding; and co-founded the School for Poetic Computation. More…
7:00-10:00 pm

Conference Dinner

WaterFire Arts Center

Tickets & Transportation
Buses leave from RISD Auditorium at 6:30 and from The Graduate Hotel at 7:00, 7:15, 7:30. Return buses to Graduate Hotel depart at 9:30, 9:45, 10:00, 10:15. Purchase of separate dinner ticket is required—deadline is Nov 4. More info & tickets.

Tuesday,

November 12

8:00-8:45 am

Continental Breakfast

Market Square Tent

8:45-9:30 am

Ethnographic Agency

RISD AuditoriumPapers

Curated by Anne Harris (RMIT University)

Ethnographic Agency in a Data-Driven World: A Methodological and Theoretical Toolkit for Doing Ethnography in Data-Intensive Settings
Nadine Sarah Levin (Facebook)

Doughnut Economics, Agency, and Ecological Design: Ethnography for Doughnut-Centered Designers
Christopher Golias (Google)

9:30-10:30 am

Keynote Address

RISD AuditoriumSimon Roberts

Simon is an anthropologist and co-founder of Stripe Partners, a strategy and innovation consultancy. He writes and speaks internationally on anthropology ethnography, and technology, and has made important contributions to the EPIC community since 2005. More…
10:30-11:00 am

EPIC2020!

RISD Auditorium

11:00-12:00 pm

Closing Coffee

Market Square Tent