Microsoft's Software Snoops

From the diary of anthropologist Anne Cohen Kiel;

"...Day seven, observation of the Goodell clan of Phoenix, Ariz.: The family's evening activities continue to revolve around the computer in their den. The youngest child, Brittany, 13, has taken to spending four hours each night chatting with her friends on instant messenger. Sarah, 14, gets her turn on the computer only when her sister goes to bed. Lately, she seems to favor online trivia games. Don, their dad, is a nocturnal user. Curiously, he appears smitten by the automated female voice that welcomes him every time he logs on to the Net. His wife, Noreen, wonders why there isn't a male voice that welcomes her. This merits further study..."

OK, we made that diary entry up. But here's the point: like an increasing number of other high-tech companies, software giant Microsoft is moving beyond the concept of "usability engineers," the researchers who typically sit in cloistered labs behind one-way mirrors watching consumers grapple with new software. Today, Microsoft has a small team of real, trained anthropologists who visit the homes of regular people and study them at their computers, just as they would an indigenous tribe in the Australian outback. Afterward, they report their findings back to the company, which combines the data with results from focus groups, phone surveys and Microsoft's own usability labs. "My job is to get the larger picture about how people use software," says Kiel, 41, a mother of two who speaks seven languages.

The involvement of social scientists in software and hardware design is not new. Xerox's famed Palo Alto Research Center in California is credited with starting the trend back in 1979, when an anthropology graduate student persuaded the company to put a simple green copy button on each machine. Today, newly minted anthropologists head to companies such as Motorola, Apple, Hewlett-Packard and Intel.

Associated Link: Microsoft's Software Snoops

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