Anthro to UX with Matt Artz

In this Anthro to UX podcast episode, Jesse Dart speaks with Matt Artz about his journey into UX research. Jesse shares his path from anthropology to UX research, highlighting his unique experience studying food and organizational anthropology in tech companies. He discusses his transition from academia to UX research through an agency in Rome, and his current role as a senior UX researcher at Hyatt Hotels, where he applies ethnographic methods to understand the complex hospitality industry.

About Jesse Dart

Jesse Dart is a film photographer, writer, and Italian/American citizen based in the western United States, he frequently travels to Europe. His writing, influenced by his background in cultural anthropology, focuses on adventure, travel, society, and culture. Jesse has contributed to various publications including Monocle, The Guardian, and Vice. As a social anthropologist, Jesse is a senior researcher for Hyatt Hotels, applying his expertise to understand cultural nuances in hospitality. He holds a PhD in anthropology from The University of Sydney and an M.A. in gastronomy from the University of Gastronomic Sciences. Jesse publishes a newsletter of short stories and photos called “Art of the Escape” and his first book “Feeding the Hustle” was released in 2021. He was awarded an Artist Opportunity Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts in 2024 and has appeared on the Anthropologist on the Street podcast.

Key Takeaways

• Hotels are complex environments requiring an anthropologist’s eye to understand the nuances of guest experiences and organizational dynamics
• UX research in hospitality must consider multiple stakeholders, from guests to staff members who interact with digital products
• Ethnographic methods and fieldwork can validate and provide context to quantitative data in corporate settings
• Photography and writing skills from anthropological training can complement and enhance UX research capabilities

Key Moments

• 1:00 Introduction to anthropology through international travel and exchange programs
• 2:46 Education in applied anthropology in Australia
• 11:17 Introduction to UX through Fifth Beat agency in Rome
• 14:39 Transition to Hyatt Hotels as senior UX researcher
• 19:28 Discussion of fieldwork and ethnographic methods in corporate research
• 26:06 Integration of photography and writing with UX research career

Recommended Links

• Jesse Dart’s LinkedIn
• Jesse Dart’s Instagram
• Jesse Dart’s Substack
• Feeding the Hustle

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Elizabeth Rodwell speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. Elizabeth earned a PhD in Anthropology from Rice University. Previously, Elizabeth worked as a UX Researcher for Schlumberger and is currently an Assistant Professor of Digital Media at the University of Houston and the Executive Director of the Houston UXPA (HUXPA). She recently published the paper, A Pedagogy of Its Own: Building A UX Research Program. About Elizabeth Rodwell Elizabeth Rodwell is a media anthropologist who is interested in interactivity, television, emergent technology (in general), and artificial intelligence (specifically). She is also a usability researcher (UX). Her first book Push the Button: Interactive Television and Collaborative Journalism in Japan (forthcoming) examines the post-Fukushima tensions in the Japanese journalism and television industries, and seeks to account for the ways that media professionals are responding to increasingly skeptical and distracted audiences. She also tracks the global debut of interactive television in Japan– a cutting-edge fusion of mediums that represented the most dramatic departure from existing television technology in several decades. She was interested in examining how the concept and practice of participation change as technology evolves the means by which people can contribute. Currently, she is working on a project at the intersection of artificial intelligence / machine learning and user experience (UX). Partnering with UX researchers and designers in companies both in the U.S. and Japan, and she is exploring what it means to think about usability when we’re attempting to replicate human interaction via machine. Recommended Links

• Elizabeth Rodwell on LinkedIn
• Elizabeth Rodwell on Twitter
• Elizabeth Rodwell on Google Scholar
• HUXPA
• A Pedagogy of Its Own: Building A UX Research Program

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Amy Santee speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. Amy earned a MA in Applied Anthropology from the University of Memphis. After school, she worked in UX for a decade at companies like eBay and is now a UX career coach. About Amy Santee Amy Santee is a loud and proud career coach for current and aspiring user experience and technology professionals. From professional branding and confidence building, to job search strategy and interviewing, she works with clients to create a strategy to achieve career goals through an iterative process of exploring, learning, testing, and refining. Recommended Links

• Amy's Website
• Amy on LinkedIn
• Anthropologizing.com

Episode Transcript Please note this transcript is an automated transcription and may have some errors. Matt Artz: [00:00:00] Today, I'm with Amy Santee, a former UXR or transitioning out of UX, but with lots of UX experience now turning into a UX career coach. And so we're going to have a great conversation about, not only Amy's experience working in UX, but also all of her recommendations of how you might be able to transition into UX. [00:00:20] And you've worked in companies such as eBay. You have run your own business. Now you're really starting up. Sort of second version of your business, if you will. So you have a lot of broad experience. You want to maybe talk a little bit about that, what first brought you to anthropology? [00:00:36] How did you maybe find your way to UX? Give us a little overview. [00:00:39] Amy Santee: [00:00:39] Yeah, absolutely. And thank you so much for having me on your show. I'm really excited to be here. So yeah, again, my name's Amy Santee and I use she, her pronouns. And I live in Portland, Oregon. How I got into anthropology. It has a really long history. [00:00:53]I knew it as early as age 14 or 15 that I wanted to be an anthropologist and that's because of a computer game I played where in the game I met Dennis. Ethnobotanist on the Amazon trail. That was the name of the game actually. And I just got really curious about ethnobotany and then I, found that was a subdiscipline of anthropology and I got broader and broader The first book I picked up at borders. [00:01:17]I don't know if you remember that store, but it was Napoleon Shannon's book about being in the Amazon rainforest with different tribes. And I know that's actually a controversial book now. But I didn't know that back then, I was just kinda like exploring what was anthropology all about. And I did end up going to get my bachelor's in anthropology, as well as my master's and. [00:01:41] Initially I had that kind of basic simplified understanding of anthropology as studying other cultures and like going off and traveling the world. And, as we know, that's not a, that's really only a slice of what doing anthropology could look like. And so throughout my education especially into my master's degree, which I got at the university of Memphis in 2011. [00:02:04]My, my world expanded, or my view of anthropology expanded to encompass basically answering questions and solving problems that relate to human beings in any place on any topic. And yeah. My program at Memphis was an applied anthropology program. And so we took I took a lot of courses on applied anthropology and the realms of let's say education, healthcare urban development Basically the main topics that you might find in an anthropology program? [00:02:34] I did take a consumer research course when I was there as well, which I think planted the seed of possibly working inside of businesses and non products. And I, but my program was still very academic. Even for an applied program. And so there was just this continued growth and expansion of my understanding of what anthropology is over time and throughout my career. [00:02:58] And I really didn't fully know that until I left school, which is counter counterintuitive. If you think about it, like you want to know that. Before you leave. But there was a lot of had to fig figure out a lot of new definitions and shaping and defining my identity as an anthropologist in different ways. [00:03:16] And eventually not even referring to myself as an anthropologist and keeping that as a, a bonus or something in the background to bring up in the context of being a user experience researcher. [00:03:31] Matt Artz: [00:03:31] Great. Thanks for that. And so a few things in there. So I guess first, where did you actually hear really about UX? [00:03:38] So if you di...

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Rachel Fleming speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. Rachel earned a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Colorado Boulder and currently works as a design researcher at Idea Couture.

About Rachel Fleming

Rachel Fleming is a user experience researcher and PhD cultural anthropologist working in the digital product space. Building on over a decade of experience using qualitative methods in international and US settings, she combines the iterative process of design thinking with an ethnographic approach to complex problems. She uses generative and evaluative research methods with the goal of improving products so they truly resonate with users. She often acts as a facilitator on product teams to focus strategic direction and help a team collaborate more productively.

Recommended Links

• Rachel Fleming's website
• Rachel's FAQs about User Experience (UX) Research
• So You’re Interested in User Experience (UX) Research? Thoughts from an Anthropologist Working in Industry
• Design Lab
• Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC)
• NAPA's Design by Anthropologists blog series
• Beyond the Professoriate
• The Professor Is In
• From PhD to Life

Watch the Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmTP9jCI3r0

Episode Transcript

Please note this transcript is an automated transcription and may have some errors.

Matt Artz:

Welcome to the anthro to ux podcast, where you will learn how to break into UX with an anthropology degree, through conversations with leading anthropologists, working in user experience, you will learn firsthand how others made the transition, what they learned along the way and what they would do differently. We will be discussing what it means to do UX research from a practical perspective and what you need to do to prepare resume and portfolio. I'm your host, Matt Artz a business anthropologist specializing in design anthropology, and working at the intersection of product management user experience and business strategy. Let's get started. Hi everyone. Welcome to anthro the UX video podcast. Today, I'll be talking with Rachel Fleming, who I'm very glad to have here. Rachel is a design researcher at idea couture, which is a cognizant digital business. And so Rachel really thankful to have you here. I appreciate all the work you've done in this space so far, you know, I've read some of your articles and I know that you're passionate about helping other people get into UX from anthropology. So thanks. And I look forward to our conversation today.

Rachel Fleming:

Great. Thanks for having me. This is fantastic.

Matt Artz:

So can tell me a little bit about yourself, you know, how you sort of got to the role you're in today and a little background on your education and, you know, maybe just a little bit of the backstory.

Rachel Fleming:

Sure. Well, I discovered anthropology way back in undergrad and found it was a good fit for kind of understanding patterns about the world and getting to talk to people, find out what's actually going on. And I kind of hemmed and hawed about going to grad school and took a detour into urban planning. So I wanted to do something a little more practical got very interested in kind of work and the meaning of work and then realized I wanted to go back and study that as an anthropologist. So I ended up in a PhD program at the university of Colorado Boulder and did a project in India on women who are in tech jobs there in Bangalore and Bangalore is kind of the tech center of India. These jobs have not been around for very long. And so I really looked at kind of the generational impact of women having access to jobs that they hadn't had in generations past and what that meant for gender equity and also why their attrition was so high.

Rachel Fleming:

They tend to leave jobs quite qui...

In this episode of the Anthro to UX podcast, Jamie Sherman speaks with Matt Artz about her UX journey. Her story began with a cold call to Ken Anderson at Intel for an informational interview and matured into a career researching emerging technologies at Intel, Netflix, and now Atlassian.

About Jamie Sherman

Jamie Sherman is a cultural anthropologist and a senior researcher at Atlassian. Previously she was a senior product researcher at Netflix and a senior research scientist at Intel. Past work focused on emergent technological practices, from quantified self to virtual reality and the future of entertainment. Her research has developed usages and driven strategies for video game play, media creation, and online toxicity. Jamie holds a PhD in anthropology from Princeton University and was co-chair of EPIC2021.

Recommended Links

• Jamie Sherman on LinkedIn