corporate & business anthropology

Coming Back Around to Culture – an anthropologist’s thoughts about Technology

Published on October 25, 2004 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, corporate & business anthropology, culture traditions, design anthropology, technology

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 science of ethnography is an ideal tool to designing mobile phones”

Published on October 20, 2004 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, corporate & business anthropology, design anthropology, gift economy gift giving, technology

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

New book: Anthropologist roams the corridors and meeting rooms of the BBC

Published on October 4, 2004 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, books, corporate & business anthropology, fieldwork / methods

The Guardian

What happens when you let a sharp-eyed anthropologist roam the corridors and meeting rooms of the British Broadcasting Corporation for several years? You get this, a fascinating patchwork of interviews, testimonials, diary entries and analysis that offers distressing evidence – if any still were needed – of the ideological vandalism committed by John Birt in the name of efficiency. >> continue

SEE ALSO
More info on the book “Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the reinvention of the BBC”Research project: The Future of Public Service Broadcasting (Cambridge University)

The Guardian

Design Anthropology: Software development by participatory observation

Published on October 4, 2004 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, corporate & business anthropology, design anthropology, fieldwork / methods, technology, websites

Anne Lau Revil’s homepage

Software design is usually undertaken by IT specialists, who have a technical training. Few have a sociocultural background. In this paper I will show several examples of software design as sociocultural adjustments, and more specifically how anthropologists may contribute.

Finally, I will discuss how the value of the anthropological contribution to the development of software systems may be improved through the development of more flexible methods of communicating the research to both the academic world and the user community. >> continue (pdf, 14 pages) or go to Anne Lau Revil’s homepageJoel Spolsky: Over the next decade, I expect that software companies will hire people trained as anthropologists and ethnographers to work on social interface design (found via Conversations with Dina – Dina Mehta’s Blog)

UPDATE Links updated with copy from the Internet Archive. The website was removed.

Anne Lau Revil's homepage

Ethnographic Study About Life Without Internet: Feelings of Loss and Frustration

Published on September 22, 2004 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, corporate & business anthropology, cyberanthropology, internet

Press Release

All participants in the qualitative portion of the study found living without the Internet more difficult than they expected, and in some cases impossible, because the tools and services the Internet offers were firmly ingrained in their daily lives. Nearly half the respondents in a complementary quantitative study indicated they could not go without the Internet for more than two weeks and the median time respondents could go without being online is five days.

The qualitative portion of the study, fielded by Conifer Research, consisted of an ethnographic study in which participants chronicled their lives without the Internet for a period of two weeks. The study provided a deep view into the emotional connections consumers have with the Internet as the medium that helps them drive their lives.

Regardless of age, household income or ethnic background, all participants in the ethnographic research study experienced withdrawal and feelings of loss, frustration and disconnectedness when cut off from the online world. Users described their time offline as ‘feeling left out of the loop,’and missing their ‘private escape time’ during the day. The survey findings demonstrate that a larger circle of social networks have developed as a result of Web access. >> continue (LINK UPDATED)

Press Release