People scientists, not software or hardware scientists, are in the forefront of research for today's high tech products and services. Corporate anthropologists, Melissa Cefkin, IBM Almaden Research Center, and Alexandra Zafiroglu, Intel Corporation, provided an overview of corporate ethnography and shared some recent projects with attendees at the San Andreas Chapter dinner program on October 7.
IBM is in the Services Business...
Melissa studies workplaces in the corporate world for her IBM internal and external clients. As a scientist who studies “services” in a research division of IBM, she observes corporate culture using anthropology field work techniques such as observation and interviews. Anthropologists in the business world focus on the collective group and the mundane to look for connections. After observation and analysis, they build an explanatory model to use in finding opportunities for new services or process design.
Melissa described a project at IBM that studied and analyzed a mobility group in the Philippines. This group manages corporate relocation services for IBM employees moving to or from an Asian country. She used the model that was developed to explain the role of an individual in relation to the social aspects of the work group. One of her challenges has been to educate academic anthropologists about anthropology in the corporate setting. She has edited a book, Ethnography and the Corporate Encounter: Reflections on Research in and of Corporations. One of the attendees won a copy of this book in a drawing at the end of the meeting.
Adoption of Technical Products Involves Social Norms...
Alexandra is an ethnographic researcher and member of the User Experience Team of the Intel Digital Home Group. She focuses on “why” people do what they do, not just “what” they do. Similar to Melissa, she learns from experience, using techniques such as home interviews and participatory design, to make sense of it all. Alexandra described projects that she has worked on that touch on libraries: managing collections, collecting and curating content behavior, and private vs. public spaces in libraries. Her examples included an Indian cell phone and video game vendor, a Japanese curator of print and digital content for personal use, comic book borrowing by Chinese and Korean children, and users feeling “at-home” in the Reed College Library (Portland, OR).
Librarians as Social Scientists...
So, attendees heard two very different examples of anthropologists working in corporations -- a fascinating evening. Librarians also study the communities with whom they work, and think endlessly about how people use and access information -- the context, the cultural biases, the social norms, and also the possibilities. We are somewhat embedded with our subjects, but have some distance to observe and interview and draw conclusions about how to help. Amateur anthropologists? What do you think? Food for thought.
Thanks to our host Lisa Sammon for making the local arrangements and moderating the session. She is with the Intel Library Research Group, who underwrote this program. San Andreas Chapter appreciates Intel's support!
-- Donna Kleiner & Jean Bedord
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