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Garret Westlake

Garret Westlake

Vice Provost for Innovation and Strategic Design, Virginia Commonwealth University · Academia

Topics Garret shaped

Researcher craft & identity, Methods, methodology & rigor, Consumer behavior & culture, AI & technology

Episodes

What Garret said — indexed claims

  • LEGO Serious Play lowers participants' barrier to contributing because the abstractness of the bricks makes it visibly impossible for there to be a single right answer, removing the social pressure that suppresses honest input in verbal-first research. — Ep. 44 · 08:45 · cl-garret-westlake-004
  • If knowledge work were only about producing the right answer, humans would already be obsolete; what justifies human contribution is the how, the context, the interconnectedness, and the diversity of perspective that AI cannot supply. — Ep. 44 · 10:22 · cl-garret-westlake-006
  • Vivid, story-shaped depictions of user friction (the 'jungle of doom,' the 'pit of despair,' the 'step into the abyss') break through to leadership where flat journey-map language ('we have a challenge in this part of the journey') routinely fails. — Ep. 44 · 16:10 · cl-garret-westlake-010
  • Giving participants 5–7 minutes to build their response provides cover for genuine thinking that direct questioning cannot — the build is partly a fidgeting alibi that protects the participant from the social pressure to answer immediately. — Ep. 44 · 12:40 · cl-garret-westlake-007
  • Trends research is the wrong default frame because it assumes a linear continuum that may not actually contain the user — the assumption that today's behavior is just another point on yesterday's line forecloses the most useful insights. — Ep. 44 · 36:08 · cl-garret-westlake-019

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