Product design is no longer about scientists sitting in their offices (mostly in the West) to develop products (for the entire world, including the inscrutable East – atleast where technology is concerned) and launching beta versions for testing and refining. Anthropological methods (tweaked to suit commercial needs) being increasingly used by large technology companies are taking design to the end user – observing their everyday interactions with the product and taking out insights that can be quite startling.
Lorenz of antropologi points to this article on Intel’s eforts at user research.
In a bid to eventually sell more chips, Intel plans to announce Monday that it has set up four new offices around the world that are staffed with anthropologists and engineers to help design computers with features for emerging markets.
Traveling from dusty rural villages in India to busy Internet cafés in Brazil, these Intel employees will collect data from weather to the content needs of people in regions where computers are not yet popular.
This effort began with China where Intel sent ethnographers to study how people interact with technologies. And they have plans for India too – Intel is working on a project targeting farming communities in India, where heat and unreliable power supply present challenges for keeping and using a PC. The company expects to launch a PC for this market next year, said Mr. Agatstein.
Here is an interesting observation study on mobile phone usage : Mobile Phone Users: A Small-Scale Observational Study
HP calls this process contextual invention – here is the HP research conducted study by HP in partnership with IMRB and Human Factors International – Contextual Invention: A multi-disciplinary approach to develop business opportunities and design solutions. This approach can be seen as a development of Contextual Design in which social and cultural factors are considered in the deployment of an existing technology. We call this approach Contextual Invention because the aim of the social science research is to inspire and generate new technology inventions with high social and business value. After an initial phase of ethnographic fieldwork looking at media use in India, the project team worked up new business and design proposals in three high-value areas.
This is nothing new. Xerox probably was the first to do so. Heres the googled link.
http://www.anthro.wayne.edu/ant3150/whatisbusinessanthropology1.htm
Neelakantanh, you are right – I am not saying this is new – but what makes some studies different and more interesting is the use of local researchers as opposed to *experts* from the West / country where the business is located – who observe and understand from their own perspective and not that of the host country / culture. beats the purpose, I think….
I’ve been noticing more and more companies looking for people with a social sciences background for this kind of research. Are we finally reaching a critical mass in this approach? BTW, the U.S. has been very slow in coming around to considering cultural factors for design issues, save for some of the big companies you mentioned. Edward T. Hall and Raymond Birdwhistell were doing this research in the 70’s, with several others.
As for local researchers versus outside experts — that can be argued both ways. Being an outsider is sometimes an advantage, if only that it does not easily allow the researcher to be destracted by an insider’s biases and cultural codes (emic vs. etic). Of course, being better familiar with a culture has advantages, too. It seems a mixed team of native and non-native researchers would be the best fit.
Eric, thanks for dropping by. my first thought about why the US has been slow in considering cultural factors in design is that US market itself is fairly homogeneous. is not to say that all states and people are similar in the US – but the kind of diversity in a country like India is not there in thgat market. I might be entirely wrong here – am just thinking aloud…
sure being an outsider has its advantages – primary being what you say about coming in with a fresh slate – but isn’t it also true that outsider bias (mostly in the form of stereotypical beliefs) can be equally dangerous and counter-productive to the research process? there is no definite answer to this – as you say, a mixed team should work best…