Fit Associates, LLC

Spring 2008 Edition

Our Current Preoccupations
Decision-making: We're working on a project that requires us to understand people's in-the-moment decision process. There's no way to get a transcript of people's brains, so we're having to cook up a sort of cocktail of methods to help us develop a useful idea of what's going on, then validate it with each participant in the study.

The long term: We have a number of client relationships that are now in their second or third year. This is giving us the long view on what it takes to Make a Difference in a large organization, using research not as an end in itself, but as a catalyst for fostering new collaborations between groups and departments, across levels of management.

Three industries: The industries associated with our current efforts: automotive, medical products, entertainment media.

Future Events
Sustainable Brands Conference
We're not presenting, but we're attending -- the Sustainable Brands Conference runs from June 2 - 5 in Monterey, and we'll be there. We're eager to meet others who, like us, intend apply design research, design methods, and the tools of organizational change to to issues of human development and sustainable industry.

EPIC 2008: Ethnographic Praxis in Industry
Another conference we'll mention doesn't happen until October, but already we're looking forward to it. That's EPIC 2008 , October 15 - 18 in Copenhagen. We borrow heavily from ethnographic methods (which is to say, methods used by anthropologists) when we immerse ourselves and our clients in the complexities of customers' lives. So this will be a great chance for shop talk and herring.