Strategic Director
Tommy Stinson is a Strategic Director in the Technology Innovation Studio at Cheskin. He has over 10 years of experience in ethnography and market research, and brings expertise in leveraging innovative research techniques to understand consumers’ mindsets, needs, and behaviors. He has worked extensively with clients in the retail, technology, telecommunications, and pharmaceutical industries, and has a passion for bringing empathetic understanding of consumers to every engagement. Prior to joining Cheskin, Tommy worked for Avenue A | Razorfish, directing strategic consulting engagements for Fortune 500 clients. He has worked closely with a variety of clients, including Scotts Miracle-Gro, Smith & Hawken, Microsoft, McKesson Pharmaceuticals, McKinsey & Co., and Genentech. Tommy holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis, and a M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Tennessee.
12 October 2007
In recent days there has been quite a bit of hubbub about the use of anthropologists to support the American military in local involvement in Afghanistan ("Army Enlists Anthropology in War Zones", New York Times, November 5, 2007). Anthropologists, public policy experts, military experts, and even design anthropologists have weighed in on the ethics of using ethnography and anthropological insight to support military objectives.
Without getting into the debate about this specific instance, the discussion has reminded me of our call to be ethical in our dealings with research participants, and I wanted to say a few words about that.
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Posted in
Methods & Techniques
by Tommy Stinson
12 April 2007
Last weekend, the Washington Post published an interesting piece about an experiment in culture. Joshua Bell, a highly-acclaimed concert violinist, put on a baseball cap and casual clothes and posed as a busker in the L'Enfant Plaza station of the Washington, D.C. Metrorail. His goal (or rather, the goal of the journalist who wrote the piece) was to see if morning commuters would stop and listen to his music.
Now this is an accomplished, highly-decorated artist playing extremely difficult musical pieces on his 18th century Stradivarius. And the end result of his 45 minute incognito concert? $32.17. And only a small handful of the thousands of morning commuters even seemed to give him a glance as they walked past.
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Posted in
Innovation & Design
by Tommy Stinson, 1 comments
14 February 2007
Last Thursday, Steve Portigal introduced a great cautionary note on the dangers of bad (read: quick and uninformed) survey design. Steve's argument was that design educators do their students a disservice by implying that quantitative online surveying is easy and quick. That it's important to know that a survey is not something that anyone can do without planning and forethought, an understanding of appropriate methodologies, and an understanding of effective nuances of survey flows and guides. (Steve, if I'm extrapolating too much, I apologize!). I think Steve's point is well made, and I would extend this cautionary note to ineffective ethnography.
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Posted in
Methods & Techniques
by Tommy Stinson, 2 comments
6 December 2006
Sometimes debates emerge that challenge my long-held assumptions and prompt me to “go back to the beginning” to examine why those assumptions are held. Recently I was reading a discussion led by Grant McCracken’s blog on “why culture matters” (http://www.cultureby.com/trilogy/). McCracken cites both sides of the argument - that understanding culture holds a minor role in innovative marketing & branding versus the notion that understanding culture plays the prime role. In reading the comments and dialogue, I couldn’t help but consider how relevant this discussion is to the work we do at Cheskin.
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Posted in
Meaningful Experience
by Tommy Stinson
