Jan Chipchase: director of international research and design projects, writer, photographer and co-founder of Studio D Radiodurans

Jan Chipchase is a director of international research and design projects, writer, photographer and co-founder of Studio D Radiodurans, SDR Traveller and The Fixer List. He has over 15 years’ experience in running international projects, has authored three books, including The Field Study Handbook and is an accomplished international keynote speaker from TED to WEF. Before founding his own practice, Jan held positions such as Executive Creative Director of Global Insights at Frog Design and Principal Scientist at Nokia. He has lived in London, Berlin, San Francisco, Shanghai, Los Angeles, and for almost a decade in Tokyo.

We talk to Jan about the concept of risk in fieldwork, misconceptions about risk, responsibility & a few how-to’s on pre-rationalizing risk before embarking on fieldwork. Lastly, he shares his view on time pressure he sees as a great forcer of prioritization. We talk about how to design the research experience with the purpose of enabling a social environment where strangers solve problems together; how he approaches the topic of access and some of the advantages of locally sourcing informants vs employing recruiting agencies; the link between data collecting, usage and ethics; why a good project should present the teams with ethical challenges ; dealing with bias when evaluating the potential impact of data; positive social engineering and advantages of qualitative research. Lastly, he shares his view on time pressure and why he sees it as a great forcer of prioritization.

Mentioned in Podcast:

Jan Chipchase blog (incl. archives)

The Field Study Handbook

The Little Book of Fixers

Studio D 2019 Masterclasses

Jan’s work:

Studio D Radiodurans

SDR Traveller

The Fixer List

Hidden in Plain Sight: How to Create Extraordinary Products for Tomorrow's Customers

The Field Study Handbook

The Little Book of Fixers

Social media and other links:

http://janchipchase.com

https://twitter.com/janchip

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Chipchase

https://medium.com/@janchip

https://www.linkedin.com/in/janchipchase

Ted Talk 2007 The Anthropology of mobile phones