Dashboards tell you what’s happening. Customers tell you why, if you bother to show up and watch. Spoiler: the slides never see it coming.
#ProductManagement #FieldResearch #UserInsights

http://branici.ro/2025/08/10/surveys-tell-you-stories-the-field-tells-you-the-truth/

Surveys Tell You Stories. The Field Tells You the Truth.

Surveys tell you stories. Fieldwork tells you the truth. Product managers need both, especially if they want to bridge the gap between what customers say and what they actually do.

Florin Branici
‘The fire has reached the stream. The green corridor is now black’

Less than an hour after we concluded our final visit to the location of the planned Meta hyperscale data centre in Gamonal/Talavera de la Reina, a large bush fire ripped through the landscape.

The night before, a local resident had guided us through the landscape to share his own fears and hopes for this territory. He pointed out how Meta had promised to maintain a ‘green corridor’ between the planned megainfrastructure and the neighbouring industrial estate to soften the destructive impact of the project. Now, he was alerting us via Whatsapp about the arrival of a large fire.

Bush fires are not unusual on this dry land. The last large fire erupted almost exactly one year ago and burned through most of the Southern half of the terrain.



Photo 1: News of the fire spreading via one of Meta’s flagship products
Photo 2: The extent of the fire as seen from above (images via Terrascope and INFOCAM)
Photo 3: Traces of last year’s fire captured during our scoping visit in September 2024
Photo 4: Remnants of last year’s fire in the ‘green corridor’
Photo 5: One of the last photographs of the ‘green corridor’ before the fire

Made possible by the Creative Industries Fund NL

#fieldresearch #datacenter #bushfire #publishing #dryclouds

June was dominated by field research in GP practices with Alison, joined at times by Nick, Ben, and Mohit.

Also featured were patient observations, reading up on triaging approaches, and a delicious Victoria sponge.

https://medium.com/@SarahRose-UR/june-2025-month-note-bea16971b29a

#UserResearch #HealthcareLeadership #FieldResearch #PrimaryCare #NHS

Overpowered by the sun

We intended to produce a series of cyanotype photographs as a low-tech method to document the more-than-human elements shaping the landscape, so we brought a printing kit with us from the Netherlands. As relative beginners with this technique, we diligently followed the instructions provided by the Dutch maker of the kit.

When developing our initial print run, all rinsed papers turned almost solid blue. Almost all of the intricate shapes and textures from the materials we had placed on the photosensitive paper had vanished. The power of the midday sun had fully exposed the entire paper.

Driven by an urge to find out what could have caused this failure, we gave it another try on the following day. This time, the prints turned out perfectly! The secret? Reducing the exposure time to less than 30% of the length indicated in the instructions. The Spanish sun was simply too powerful for Dutch standards.

In places where (natural) clouds are rare and the sun intensity is exceptionally high, mega computing infrastructures are faced with conflicting conditions. While an abundance of sunshine brings with it a significant potential for renewable energy generation through solar or wind power, it also produces tremendous heat and drought, which can make a territory unliveable over time; especially if the already scarce water resources are further exploited to provide vital cooling for overheated computer chips.

Do you ever think of the sun when you are working in the Cloud?

Made possible by the Creative Industries Fund NL

#cyanotype #sunprinting #solarenergy #fieldresearch #creativeresearch #datacenter #snakeoil

It was great to present my work on fatalism and climate action in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, in a session on "Emotions in the transition to a no-carbon society" at the Global Tipping Points conference @uniexeter.

I talked about high levels of fatalism - beliefs that the future is predetermined and that human agency is pontless - in Bougainville, how this already reduces climate action, and wonder how this could be a barrier to harnessing potential positive tipping points in populations truly left behind.

Here are my slides 👉https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1NIEhEWA2IC-4V2FC2ybCLFBmnbcO0ta4p-nhiiTOaIc/edit?usp=sharing

I also learned from @laurafoggrogers the importance of triggering positive emotions to fully engage the population at large, while Genevieve Guenther @doctorvive proposes a very interesting paradigm combining fear, outrage and desire, drawn from her book "The language of climate politics". I think everyone agrees that one size-fits-all type of communication is not optimal and that tailoring the message to the recipient is very important.

#DrJohnRowlatt discussed about how to best engage the UK population, and elderly people in particular, to switch to low-carbon heating systems. @larasningrum_dianty talked about the potential for narratives of hope in low-income countries and in general.

I look forward to continuing this discussion. 🙏 co-panelists & attendants.

#ClimateChange #ClimateAdaptation #Fatalism #Bougainville #PapuaNewGuinea #Melanesia #Research #FieldResearch

The arrival of spring doesn't just mean a return to intensive measurement period for most of our field experiments. After some years already working with its prototype, the new Literal® device arrived and is now running on our research station.

#cropphenotyping #wheat #fieldresearch #agriculturalsciences

[ARCHIVES 2021]
[journal de terrain, semaine 10, Longwy] Une longue journée.


Je déjeune à l’hôtel et part à mon rendez vous à Longwy-bas. Mon sac est lourd. Manque de chance, une fois arrivée le rendez vous est décalé à une prochaine fois. Je me retrouve bloquée avec mon sac trop lourd pour moi après 2 heures à marcher et tourner en rond et un temps plus qu’incertain. Je me réfugie à la mairie, Serge et Éric m’accueillent avec plaisir. J’avance un peu sur le projet puis je laisse une bonne partie de mes affaires pour aller faire des photos au golf (là où réside le haut fourneau). 
En chemin je me laisse happer par le « sentier de senelle », nom d’une des 4 usines de sidérurgie. Mêlant bruit de voiture, forêt et oiseau, je prend du son tout en avançant sur le chemin. 
Arrivé au haut fourneau, je remarque que quelque chose dans mon appareil déconne. Tout est sombre, comme si un filtre polarisant était activé. J’étais déjà à une bonne heure de marche de la mairie. Qu’à cela ne tienne, j’essaie tant bien que mal de faire des photographies avec l’histogramme. Merci à Ivan Mathie , Baptiste Cozzupoli et Clément Martin pour vos conseils. Je reste sur place 3 heures à découvrir de nouveaux endroits et vestiges incroyables de cette usine. De retour, je reprends mes affaires et me dirige vers le bus. En voulant prendre mon ticket, l’application ne fonctionne plus pour les cartes solidaires et bien sûr, les tarifs réduits ne sont pas donnés dans le car. Le chauffeur est super, comprend ma situation et m’attend le temps de prendre le billet en gare. 
Malgré cette journée qui a mise mes nerfs à rude épreuve, je reste sous le charme de ces vestiges cachés du passé.
~~~🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧~~~
[field note, Longwy, week 10]. A long day

#socialsciences #DocumentaryPhotography #PhotographieDocumentaire #journaldeterrain #longwyvivra #fieldwork #FieldResearch #visualanthropology #photography #landscape #usine #paysage

No city should be a lab for someone else’s theory. Cities thrive when shaped by those who inhabit them, not just by out-of-touch planners. The same applies to mobility.

HT mstdn @UrbanismNow

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/urbanism-from-asia-beyondthe-story-behind-cities-for-cities-yxwic/

#Asia #cityplanning #urbandesign #urbanism #urbanplanner #urbanplanning #inclusiveplanning #SDG11 #DecolonizeUrbanism #FieldResearch #InclusiveResearch #ParticipatoryResearch #TrufiAssociation

Urbanism from Asia and beyond~The story behind for Cities

for Cities was founded by urban designer Mariko Sugita and experience designer Yukako Ishikawa in 2019. We are both from Japan—based in Tokyo and Kyoto—with backgrounds in urban design and urban sociology.

Congrats to Marc Hasselwander, a friend and collaborator of Trufi making an impact in mobility research. His study on Mobility as a Service (MaaS) in Manila is one of the most cited papers in Transportation Research Part A.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0965856421003116

#MaaS #Manila #Philippines #FieldResearch #MobilityAsAService #ParticipatoryResearch #research #TrufiAssociation