Corporate anthropology
Posted by Jason Dunstone on August 2nd, 2007 at 3:15pm
Genevieve Bell is Intel’s chief anthropologist and director of the company’s user experience group. In an article in the Financial Review’s Boss magazine for July 2007 she talks of how “standard market research techniques are frustratingly shallow” and that “people-gazing is now de rigueur“.
Bell talks about how “innovation is the new black”. She beleives that innovation doesn’t happen in isolation. It means getting down and dirty to understand society. What do householders do on a daily basis? This includes washing dishes, baby sitting etc. It is important to appreciate the relationship between people and how they deal with technology. The approaches taken by Bell include taking inventory of people’s backyards, semi-structured interviews and asking people to the photos of things such as ‘a place they like to spend time’, ‘where they go to be alone’ etc.
A massive number of questions are investigated, they come to a small number of key issues …
- Who lives where and how are they related?
- What did the person do yesterday?
- What technology do they have?
More information about Bell, her approach and views can be found at … Genevieve Bell
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