PDN Presents: How Small Companies Can Work With Social Researchers
Small companies usually lack a large staff of researchers and can benefit from collaborations with academic researchers. Researchers can learn a lot by seeing how different design approaches impact real people's experience online. As the large platforms have become less and less open to collaboration with outside researchers, there's a huge learning opportunity on both sides to explore partnerships. Small companies can get PR-worthy evidence of their successful impact and academic researchers can get more nuanced learning than a lab setting may offer.
In this conversation, we'll explore how these partnerships can emerge. We are going into this conversation without all the answers, and we'll truly be discovering new ideas and challenges in real time. We welcome researchers, practitioners, designers, and builders from companies small and large to help us leave the conversation with ideas and best practices.
Alice Goguen Hunsberger is VP of Customer Experience at Grindr and an expert at Trust & Safety policy, as well as a member of the Integrity Institute. Annika Hansteen-Izora is the Lead Product Designer at Somewhere Good and the author of Tenderness: A Black Queer Meditation on Softness and Rage, Co-Head of Black Feast, and Co-Creator of Friendship Experiments, a to be released book and video series exploring QTPOC friendship. David Grüning is a research scientist based in Heidelberg, Germany. His research covers topics of psychology in politicized digital environments. Find David’s work on Google Scholar or his website. Julia Kamin is a researcher based in New York City. She currently is the Director of Research at Civic Health Project, developing a measurement tool for organizations to gauge their impact on reducing polarization.
The conversation will be moderated by Laure X Cast, a board member at PDN.
The Prosocial Design Network hosts a library of design interventions with evidence showing their efficacy at fostering prosocial behaviour. Our mission is to promote prosocial design: evidence-based design practices that bring out the best in human nature online. Find out more at https://prosocialdesign.org.