Access Insights · Team
Susan Faulkner
Research Director
Susan co-authored the study of hearing aid friction that led a corporation to design for accessibility. A user experience researcher and leader with more than 30 years of human centered research, much of it as an ethnographer at Intel, studying content creators, women makers, AI (artificial intelligence), and the cameras and sensors people live with.
30+
years of user experience research
10
papers and talks in the EPIC (Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference) archive
2023
Accessibility as Apparatus published at EPIC, with Richard and Becky
2019
A.I. among Us published at EPIC, on cameras and recognition systems
About
Understand what people do before deciding what they need.
Susan is a user experience researcher and leader with more than 30 years of human centered research experience. As an ethnographic researcher at Intel, she studied how people actually live with technology: digital content creators, women makers, broadband connectivity, and the ways people record and share their lives. Ten of her papers and talks appear in the archive of EPIC, the ethnographic praxis in industry community.
Her research kept returning to questions of trust. With Ken Anderson, Maria Bezaitis, and Carl DiSalvo she wrote A.I. among Us: Agency in a World of Cameras and Recognition Systems, published at EPIC in 2019, and her talks include How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Surveillance. With Emory James Edwards, Richard Beckwith, and Rebecca Chierichetti she co-authored Accessibility as Apparatus, published at EPIC in 2023, on how the friction filled experience of using hearing aids with a PC led a corporation to design for accessibility.
At Access Insights, Susan is Research Director. Her work centers accessibility and the people research usually leaves out, with methods built over three decades of watching, listening, and asking.
Selected work
Research that changed what a company built.
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Accessibility as Apparatus
Intel · EPIC 2023
Co-authored the study of the friction filled experience of using hearing aids with a PC, and how it led a corporation to design for accessibility. Written with Emory James Edwards, Richard Beckwith, and Rebecca Chierichetti.
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A.I. among Us
Intel · EPIC 2019
Co-authored Agency in a World of Cameras and Recognition Systems with Ken Anderson, Maria Bezaitis, and Carl DiSalvo, on how people negotiate being seen, recognized, and recorded.
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Women Makers
Intel · with Anne McClard
Co-authored Making Change: Can Ethnographic Research about Women Makers Change the Future of Computing?, research on who gets counted as a maker and what that means for computing.
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Creators' Market
Intel
Co-authored How Ethnography Gave Intel a New Perspective on Digital Content Creators, with Ken Anderson, Lisa Kleinman, and Jamie Sherman.
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Ethnographic Methods
EPIC community
Published on the craft itself: participant made video with Alexandra Zafiroglu, the cultural contexts of visual research with Jay Hasbrouck, and remote research with Rita Denny, Julia Haines, and Lee Ryan.
Papers and talks
Three decades of watching how people live with technology.
- Accessibility as Apparatus, EPIC, 2023.
- A.I. among Us: Agency in a World of Cameras and Recognition Systems, EPIC, 2019.
- Making Change: Can Ethnographic Research about Women Makers Change the Future of Computing?, with Anne McClard.
- Creating a Creators' Market, with Ken Anderson, Lisa Kleinman, and Jamie Sherman.
- Remote Research and the Challenge of Being There, with Rita Denny, Julia Haines, and Lee Ryan.
- How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Surveillance, PechaKucha, EPIC.
- Invisible Evidence: Our Disconnection with Broadband Connectivity, PechaKucha, EPIC.
- The Power of Participant-Made Videos, with Alexandra Zafiroglu.
Why it matters here: Access Insights does research with disabled people rather than about them. Susan has worked that way for three decades, and the hearing aid study she co-authored shows where it leads: a corporation designing for accessibility.
