Dr. Camela Logan is a Senior User Experience Researcher at Facebook. In her role, she conducts cross-cultural research for products reaching users around the world and develops original programming on cross-cultural communication and research strategies as a UX research and growth strategy advisor for Facebook’s Startup Garage at Station F. Previously, she worked as a UX research consultant for numerous startups and corporations like eBay and UN Women. A Ford Fellow of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Dr. Logan holds a doctoral degree in contemporary Francophone African expressive cultures from the University of Michigan, masters degree in medieval and modern languages (French) from the University of Oxford, and undergraduate degrees in French language and Francophone culture and international relations from Brown University. When she is not investigating what matters most to people, she’s baking as she’s also a Cordon-Bleu trained and James Beard scholarship-winning French pastry chef.
UX Research – the study of people’s behaviors, norms, and pain points with products and experiences – is one common way in which design identifies clear, validated people problems and turns good products into great ones. Conducting this research not just within but also across cultures has become the norm, as companies introduce their products to new markets and develop ones that touch the lives of people around the world with the click of a button. But what about when you’re designing a product that - through auditory, visual, and other forms of sensory feedback – bring users into an entirely new environment or culture that has no parallel in the real world? How might an understanding of people’s behaviors and norms today help inform development of products of tomorrow?
In this talk, I will discuss the heightened value of integrating cross cultural strategies into UX research around technologies that support simulated environments, like VR and AR. I will highlight why an understanding of how people from different cultures communicate with others is needed for product development in these spaces, which routinely support the gathering of and communication between people from different regions of the world. You will leave with specific ways to gain a deeper, cross-cultural understanding of people’s communication norms that can inform how you establish new, inclusive norms and spaces within simulated environments.
