In an interview with Shadoe Huard, Katie draws on her background as an advocacy filmmaker and anthropologist to give a better sense of how the fields twine and influence our research process at Mule.

Most people do not just hang out and think about web pages for fun, they’re there to do something, so we need to think about the very specific tasks that they want to do there and the information they need to make decisions or complete tasks.

…I’m engaged everyday in producing ‘research’ and ‘creative’ things like the Let’s Make Mistakes podcast or my own film work or stuff with the Disposable Film Festival, [and] no matter what I’m doing I am trying to make sure that everyone has a totally clear understanding of what and why we’re doing things and that the things I’m spending time on are making things better. So I approach the beginning of a research period the same way I approach production of a film. Obviously there are different tasks involved, but the same themes are there throughout: figure out who the audience is, figure out what they want, agree on the medium and general purpose and then develop an idea with those contraints.

Read the full interview here, which includes talk on the web as a giant system in itself, the relationship between researcher and designer, and the best sum-up/put-down of bad marketing tactics: “A click is not love, despite how much it feels like it at 3am when you’re looking at analytics.”

Tweet | Written by Tina Lee on January 5, 2012 |