Carlos Zepeda

Culture Club (Amsterdam)

Carlos is an interdisciplinary researcher, intersecting social sciences with his training as an engineer. He was raised in Mexico, from where his projects led him to live and work across North America, South America and Asia – developing a dynamic intercultural mindset. He has worked on all ends of the customer journey, from business development to behind-the-scenes implementation of IT systems. Plus, he has consulted on mobility services in Beijing and Montreal and art museums in Prague and Amsterdam. He recently graduated with a triple master’s degree in global studies from University Of Glasgow, Uppsala University and Erasmus University Rotterdam. From this he grew motivated to learn about globalisation and innovation, and how they manifest locally through the creative industries – be it fashion shows, streaming series or pop culture moments. As part of our Culture Club, he is immersed in the world of cultural insights, showing his drive to know about the unknown. On the weekends, he’s likely to be visiting a museum exhibition, attending a film (festival) or working out to Rihanna.

Narrated Galleries

We love films, but narrated galleries – fusing showreels of still images and audio of participant commentary – creates outputs that allow for high levels of reflection and audience empathy. Ideal for user experience work, in other words
Crowd Communities

We’ve a wealth of experience at setting up and managing communities for clients, with learnings on how best to engage audiences and a full box of tricks for maximising what we get out of the work – including geo tagging, streaming in social media data and a mobile optimised platform
Pinterest

We’ve used Pinterest to really good effect on a number of projects recently, helping us to explore differences and commonalities among different typologies in areas such as fashion and style, home, holidays and entertainment. Engagement levels with participants always rank high, and clients love the vividness and clarity of the findings.
Citizen Journalism

Citizen journalism works on the principle of making reporters of our participants, briefing them to capture what’s happening in the lives of their friends and family via video dispatches and blogging. It gets us places where we can’t otherwise get. It bypasses the bias of having a researcher in attendance. People are often more accurate reporters on those around them than on themselves, so that’s another bias circumnavigated.
Network Audits

If you want to really understand how people interact with those around them, it’s logical to research interconnected groups of friends, family and work colleagues. First developed as part of our award winning word of mouth research for Guardian News & Media, and since then refined and reconfigured across a range of global projects, our network audit approach helps us understand who’s influencing who as authentically as possible.