NPR (Radio Interview)
NPR’s Eric Weiner reports on the emerging field of corporate anthropology, where researchers dissect consumer appetites and help engineers build user-friendly products. >> continue
NPR (Radio Interview)
NPR's Eric Weiner reports on the emerging field of corporate anthropology, where researchers dissect consumer appetites and help engineers build user-friendly products. >> continue
Ross Teague, Manager of Design Reseach and Senior Human Factors, Local Tech Wire
The use of anthropological principles in conducting product and customer research has become very popular of late, and for good reason. Anthropologists can be viewed as the first market researchers, and their discoveries can provide truly actionable learning.
Researchers have typically focused on the method of contextual research – that is, getting out into the customer environments to see how they really work and to interview them in their environments. A method that is often overlooked that can provide valuable insight is key informant interviewing. >> continue (updated link)
Ross Teague, Manager of Design Reseach and Senior Human Factors, Local Tech Wire
The use of anthropological principles in conducting product and customer research has become very popular of late, and for good reason. Anthropologists can be viewed as the first…
ZDNet UK
People are the biggest security threat facing IT, a report says. That is not where the problem lies. People should come first, programmers second. We especially see it in online security, where the user is supposed to remember all manner of things – tiny yellow padlocks, checking URLs for https://, and a different password for every site.
Computer security is designed by engineers and sold by marketing departments. Neither group is known for its deep insights into human behaviour. There are two groups of people who must get much more involved in IT design, security: Humanities experts are one group – anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, graphics designers, even dramatists – while the other is the user base itself. >> continue
ZDNet UK
People are the biggest security threat facing IT, a report says. That is not where the problem lies. People should come first, programmers second. We especially see it in online security, where the user is supposed to remember all…
TechnoTaste
I have come back around finally to the reason I came to School of Information Management Systems in the first place: a belief that the tools and perspectives of anthropology are useful and needed.
In the face of all the new technologies and applications today it’s easy to forget that behavior drives technology. If culture drives behavior, at least to some degree, then it ought to be essential, not only to the way we understand the uses and contexts of technology, but to its design.
It’s not useful to take for granted that there is something fundamentally new about the informational, technical world in which we live. I have a sneaking suspicion that a great deal more is the same than is different. Culture is too important – too pervasive and immutable – to respond on a whim to the development of new technologies, even if they fundamentally change the way we live. >> continue
TechnoTaste
I have come back around finally to the reason I came to School of Information Management Systems in the first place: a belief that the tools and perspectives of anthropology are useful and needed.
In the face of all the new…
The Feature
People often confuse what they want with what they need when it comes to consumer products. Manufacturers try to collect this information through interviews, but observing users’ behavior in their natural environment can provide better insights. The science of ethnography can be an ideal tool to learn how teenagers use mobile phones and to help shape designs to cater to them.
Last year, a team of researchers went to a sixth-form college in England and for five months observed the way a group of students used their mobile phones. The researchers used these observations, along with periodic interviews, to come up with a concept for a 3G mobile phone that addressed their findings.
The researchers came to the conclusion that mobile phones were not only used as tools for transmitting and receiving information, but were also used as tools to establish and maintain the status of social networks. Mobiles facilitated the “obligations of exchange.” In particular, students have a social contract with each other to give and accept “gifts” in the form of text messages. The gift’s value is derived in part from the message’s content, but it also comes from the fact that the gift was given at all, regardless of its content.
>> continue
The Feature
People often confuse what they want with what they need when it comes to consumer products. Manufacturers try to collect this information through interviews, but observing users’ behavior in their natural environment can provide better insights. The science of…