Contents

Acknowledgments vii

1 The Anthropological Approach 1

2 A History of Anthropology in 9
Western Organizational Life

3 Techniques for Conducting Fieldwork 23

for Business Organizations

4 Seeing Cultural Groupings 43

5 Ethical Concerns 63

6 Marketing and Consumer Behavior 73

7 Design Anthropology 88

8 Organizational Anthropology 100

9 Understanding Issues of Globalization 109

10 The Importance of Holism 126

11 Where Do We Go from Here? 132

Bibliography 134
Index 144

v
 Acknowledgments

Ten years after the publication of the first edition of this book, it
is satisfying to see the publication of a second edition and to contem-
plate the ways in which the field of business anthropology has grown
and developed internationally. I salute all my colleagues who work in
this field both inside and outside academia and regret I was not able to
discuss more of their work in this volume.
I wish to thank Tom Curtin and Jeni Ogilvie at Waveland Press
for their friendship and their help with my publications over the last
ten years. This has made publishing with Waveland a pleasure. I
appreciate the continued support of the anthropology department at
the University of North Texas and thank my family, Dennis, Mark,
Peter, and Andrew, for their patience and love. Any errors in this book
are, of course, my own.

vii
Chapter Seven

Design Anthropology

Listening to scientists and

videotaping kids at breakfast . . .

Intel was interested in how computers were being used in extreme

situations. They asked John Sherry to find out. His search for the
answer led him to the Alaskan salmon industry, where he found a “ten-
der” (the individual who acquires the catch from the fishers and trans-
ports it to the cannery) who had duct-taped a notebook computer to the
wall of his ship. There the tender made entries keeping track of pay-
ments and reports vital to his business exchanges. In that environment
with fish, blood, and scales everywhere, Sherry was told, “I need a com-
puter that’s so durable I can blast it with a deck hose and it will still
work.” Sherry returned to inform Intel that they needed to think about
designing computers for rugged use. Some users need a computer that
can withstand being hosed down on the deck of a ship!
In another instance, a computer company wanted to know if the
packaging for its computers could be improved. They wanted to know if
people who tend to be intimidated by learning how to work new com-
puters were being put off by the difficulties of getting into the packag-
ing before they ever plugged in the machine. To find out, an
anthropologist set up a booth at a consumer trade show and asked peo-
ple to volunteer to unpackage new machines in return for a small com-
pensation. She videotaped the process and as a result learned how her
company could create more consumer friendly packaging (Weise 1999).

88
Design Anthropology 89

WHY DESIGN FIRMS HIRE ANTHROPOLOGISTS

Anthropologists get close to their subject of study—in this case the

potential user of a product—to get a precise idea of what end users
want. “Traditional market research tools are limited by their question-
and-answer format. . . . In the case of surveys, you’re telling the respon-
dent how to answer, and you’re not giving them any room for anything
else,” explained Andrea Saveri (cited in Weise 1999:4d), who employed
ethnographers at the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, California.
Ethnographers can move past that. Lucy Suchman says that as an
anthropologist studying user behavior, she studies situated action. This
means that she observes action as it is taking place. A person’s next
action is determined to some extent by the actions that immediately
precede it. Suchman uses this level of detail in understanding human
interaction with machines because she feels these are instances in
which one must observe a sequence of behavior in order to understand
the significance of a specific behavior (Suchman 1987). As Katherine
Burr, an anthropologist who is chairman of Hanseatic Group, Inc., a
quantitative fund management company that uses pattern recognition
to trade securities, futures, and currencies for global institutional inves-
tors (http://www.lojagroup.com/about-loja/katherine-harvey-burr/), suc-
cinctly stated: “Preconceptions can kill you” (cited in Weise 1999:4d).
Anthropologists, because their research techniques are honed for and in
those situations in which they do not know enough to be able to form
preconceptions, know how to research a topic with fewer preconcep-
tions. Their formula? Go to the people; ask and watch.
In the field of product design and development, an anthropologist
may be involved in creating new products (bathroom cleaners or small
cooking appliances), services (packaged tours), or policies (rules for fre-
quent shopper discounts). According to the Industrial Designers Soci-
ety of America, the design field “envision(s) and give(s) shape to new, or
modified, products and services” (Wasson 2000:377). As Denny
explains, frequently the client is asking the anthropologist to discover
“unmet needs.” Denny believes that the assumption underlying this
request is that the consumer is a passive vessel waiting to receive new
products. As anthropologists, we know that the relationship between
consumers and the products they use is more complex than this. For
example, when a client asked, “What are the unmet needs in spray
‘trigger’ cleansers?” Denny (2002:156–157) knew to reframe the ques-
tion into “What does ‘clean’ mean today?” Or, in response to “How is
technology integrated in the home?” she knew to think in terms of ques-
tions like “What is a telephone?” “What is a television?” and “What is
‘home’ today?” One of the values of the anthropological perspective is
90 Chapter Seven

the ability to step back and look at the issues being addressed in a
larger context, which gets at the cultural assumptions of the original
question and leads to a more holistic and valuable answer. Meeting the
consumers’ unmet needs is a complex problem, as consumers fre-
quently cannot articulate those needs and do not realize what might be
useful to them (Wasson 2000:377). Before they became available, I had
no idea I needed either Velcro fasteners or a gourmet coffee shop on
every corner.
Ethnographic techniques have become popular in the design field
because they fill a void. At one time, designers depended primarily on
human factors research, which developed out of cognitive psychology
and marketing research. Human factors research takes into account
human cognitive abilities and the things that make a product easy for
humans to use; for example, if the hardware on a door that you must
push to open is flat, it becomes obvious to the user that to open the door
she must push, not pull (Wasson 2000). While human factors research
is useful for understanding the best way to design some products, for
others, it is too abstract and removed from everyday reality because it
is often conducted in controlled environments, like labs (Van Veggel
n.d.). In addition, this type of research focuses on what goes on in indi-
viduals’ heads and does not take into account the social and cultural
context and group interaction. Thus, there is no opportunity to observe
and learn from the rich interaction of social beings in which products
are not only used but also understood. Anthropologists are the social
scientists uniquely situated by training to analyze that rich social
milieu and that group-patterned interaction.
Other information-gathering techniques, such as user surveys,
focus groups, demographic studies, and product sales history, come
from sociology and its use of quantitative methods. These techniques
provide useful information, but they depend on past history and what
the user tells the researcher. Again, the data they provide are not as
rich as the data that ethnography can provide. They do not get the
researcher out there, watching the user in action (Wasson 2000:377–
378). Data that are self-reported inform the researcher about the atti-
tudes and perceptions of the individual but do not show the researcher
how a person actually uses the product. For all of us, what we say we
do and what we actually do are two very different things. Through par-
ticipant observation, either real or virtual (video), the anthropologist
learns about what people actually do, which in turn indicates whether
the design of the product facilitates its use. In surveys and focus
groups, the subjects of a study are limited to answering the questions
the researchers pose; the subjects do not create the questions them-
selves. As discussed in chapter 3 on methods, one of the contributions
of anthropological techniques is that they allow the subjects to tell the
researchers the questions that they need to ask (Van Veggel n.d.).
Design Anthropology 91

It is due to the limitations of the other methods that design firms

are turning to anthropologists. Ethnographic techniques are not the
only valuable tools anthropologists offer, however. After all, anyone can
videotape consumers in the act of using a product. In addition, anthro-
pologists offer a theoretical grounding and an understanding of the
interrelationships of the variables that are essential to providing valu-
able and useful analysis of the data. As Wasson (2002:25) puts it, “a vid-
eotape alone cannot answer questions about how, for instance,
particular user-product interactions are situated in consumers’ family
dynamics, work pressures, and cultural beliefs.”

ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH
IN PRODUCT DESIGN

Whether called in to help develop a new product, what Susan

Squires (2002) calls “discovery” research, or called in to help improve
an existing product, the anthropologist is likely to work closely with the
designers who actually create the product.

Discovery Research: Developing New Products

In a discovery project, Squires worked for a large breakfast food
company interested in creating a new breakfast food for kids. Squires
was hired to find out about family breakfast routines and to learn what
kids ate. She and her colleagues formed two, two-member teams. Each
team had one social scientist and one designer. They familiarized them-
selves with market research and industry reports on breakfast food
consumption, as these are often sources of information about what is
considered “acceptable” thinking on breakfast food. Then, Squires and
her colleagues recruited families to participate in their study. The Kelly
family, for instance, was recruited because the mother had participated
in an earlier study for the same client on what people say about break-
fast and breakfast food. Squires and her colleagues wanted to see if
breakfast activities actually matched what people said. So the teams
arrived at homes at 6:30 A.M. with video cameras, tape recorders, pens,
and paper to record the early morning routines of families. They came
with a long list of questions they hoped to answer (Squires 2002:110):
What were the morning routines at the Kelly house? Who was
there and who was not?
What other foods might be available?
What is it like to coax a four-year-old to eat at 6:30 in the morning?
What else had to get done before the family departed the house?
92 Chapter Seven

Where did the family go after leaving the house?

Did anyone pick up food after leaving the house?
After taping the morning’s activities, they returned to their office
to review the tapes and transcripts and determine their next step. They
wanted to understand breakfast in the context of the Kelly family’s
lives, so they followed family members in the following days. They
observed the kids at day care and contacted the father at work.
Squires and her colleagues continued to follow families until they
could identify a pattern of breakfast behavior relevant to their client’s
concerns. They found that moms were interested in nutrition and kids
were interested in fun. In addition, kids (and frequently even parents)
were not eating breakfast at home before leaving for the day. The rea-
son for this was simple: the time was too early in the day. Modern North
American families begin their day at 6:30 and 7:00 A.M., a time so early
that their bodies are not yet hungry. Young children are ignoring Mom’s
nutritious breakfast and are either not eating or finding something
more fun to eat, like a heavily sugared cereal that turns the milk blue.
This lack of breakfast frequently results in kids getting hungry mid-
morning. One four-year-old whom Squires videotaped ate his lunch
during the 10:00 A.M. recess at the day-care center he attended. His
body was not hungry at 6:30 but was by 10:00. Squires’s (2002) findings
helped the breakfast manufacturer create a new breakfast food (Go-
Gurt) for kids that is fun and portable; it is yogurt in a tube.
In another discovery project, Heiko Sacher (2002) was involved in
designing an Internet software package for scientists. The design proj-
ect was conducted by a team composed of members from the software
company that was the client and members, including Sacher, from GVO,
a California design firm. The team consisted of two social scientists, one
designer, and two software developers. Their task was to create a user
interface for a database containing over four million items; the project
lasted three months. The existing user interface for the software worked
the way surfing the Web works, but the users, lab research scientists,
were evaluating it with comments like “it doesn’t seem efficient,” “it is
clumsy,” “I don’t like it—don’t ask me why” (Sacher 2002:188–189). So
the team listened to the scientists describe how they go about gathering
data in their research. The scientists used expressions like “go there,”
and “find” or “discover,” and “get” or “pull out,” and “put together,” “col-
late,” and “understand.” The following are examples of their comments.
“I go to the database X and I go to database Z and I read about it
there.” “I wanna know what’s out there, what others have done.”
“I take the hits from the search . . . pick a few . . . go back and look at
those analysis results . . . then from there I might take those and
search again . . . then I’ll get the items themselves and take that . . .”
(Sacher 2002:189)
Design Anthropology 93

Sacher and his team realized that the scientists’ mental model for
doing research is different from the pattern one uses in surfing the
Web. Scientists go out from the home base, gather data, and bring it
back to compare and collate. Then they go out again, gather more data,
bring it back, keep the good, and throw out the rest. In contrast, in a
Web search, you enter a search topic and are taken through a string of
sites, creating a maze of interconnections. An Internet research pack-
age designed on this typical Web surfing model would not be used by
scientists whose lab research techniques follow the model described
above. Consequently, the software had to be designed to work the way
the scientists work. Analysis of language used by scientists describing
their own research endeavors and the difficulties they experienced
finding things on the Internet led Sacher to the clues that helped him
develop a successful software package for scientists.
Christina Wasson describes work for Steelcase done at E-Lab, a
design firm that relied heavily on anthropological techniques. Steel-
case manufactures office furniture and office partitions. Frequently an
office is structurally one large space that is then divided by partitions
into offices and work cubicles. The designers working at Steelcase
thought in terms of two types of work areas: individual—one’s individ-
ual office—and group—meeting rooms. E-Lab research, however,
showed them that workers were using space in ways the designers had
never assumed; workers met and discussed work in areas such as hall-
ways, not designed for group work. Consequently, Steelcase began
thinking in terms of products, such as whiteboards, used for writing
down ideas with markers, and chairs, which could be placed in these
other communal spaces to make it easier to work there. As a result of
the E-Lab study, it has now become routine at Steelcase to consider
workers’ needs for work-enabling products in spaces formerly consid-
ered “dead” space (Wasson 2000:384).
In projects like Steelcase, researchers collect data in numerous
ways. In one project in an office setting, Wasson and her colleagues
used eight stationary video cameras, which operated eight hours a day
for five days. In addition during that time, three researchers were
engaged full-time in interviewing, shadowing subjects, touring their
desks, and in general observing, all with a handicam to capture what
they saw. Employees were also asked to keep diaries of their activities
related to the project. After that data collection, the researchers
returned to their own office to begin the time-consuming task of view-
ing and analyzing their tapes and other collected data (Wasson, per-
sonal communication June 29, 2002).
Ken Anderson and Rogério de Paula (2006) of Intel provide
insight into how layers of cultural difference that are often overlooked
can point the way to possible new products. While studying the lives of
urban women in Brazil, they stumbled upon an example of how US cor-
94 Chapter Seven

porations disproportionately favor Western values in designing and

developing products. This discovery came while riding on a bus and
later a boat to get to and from their research site for the project on
women. They describe a bus ride in which riders, on entering the bus,
spontaneously joined in conversations in progress so that the bus, com-
plete with loud music in the background, was a noisy affair where mul-
tiple, simultaneous, conversations were ongoing and no passenger
could escape participation. They describe how Antonio, their guide who
attempted to sit silently and stare out the window, was reluctantly
drawn in:
A woman in the seat next to him asks the man in front of them
whether he would give her an ice-cream he is carrying in his cool-
er—he is a street vendor, who probably spent the day selling ice-
cream on the beach. They start negotiating . . . and that conversa-
tion, as by “magic,” turns into one about religious values. . . . Soon
they, together with a woman standing, who has just joined the con-
versation, are engaging Antonio. He looks out more. They talk more
to him. Despite repeated attempts at resistance, soon he is pulled
into the bus conversation. (2006:65–66)
Anderson and de Paula describe another experience that occurred on a
30-minute ferry ride to the mainland:
[A]s soon as the boat left the island, people started moving about.
Kids went to the back to play, girls grouped together with some
young guys also on the back and started talking, laughing, discuss-
ing, and the like. . . . On the rooftop, adults also had fun—some
pulled out some beer cans from the coolers, some started singing
and trying some samba steps in the limited space they had. . . . Ev-
eryone was drawn into this single collectivism. (2006:68).
By contrast, when crowded into temporary, public, transportation
vehicles, whether bus, subway, or train, people in the US tend to prac-
tice “being together alone” (2006:68). This means they may practice
“cocooning” in which they create a place of individual solitude while
among the masses. My students recently observed this while conduct-
ing a field project on city buses in Denton, Texas. Most other students
on the bus had settled down in their seats with earphones in their ears
listening to their MP3 players. None were interacting but instead had
created a bubble of individual solitude. This is cocooning. The other
common practice in the US is the “absent present” where the individual
is socially engaged, but not with his bus mates. Rather, he is chatting
on his cell phone or texting. Anderson and de Paula explain that Intel
and other technology companies are focused on making products that
fit these documented trends in the West, meaning “the trends of social
isolation, escapism and a focus on ‘me’”(2006:70). In so doing, however,
they are missing the opportunity to capitalize on—that is, creating
Design Anthropology 95

products geared to—other cultural realities as exemplified by the

extemporaneous social collectiveness occurring on public transporta-
tion in Brazil.
Furthermore, Anderson and de Paula suggest that developing
products for the unique Brazil experience would allow Intel and others
to avoid the accusation of colonization in a postcolonial era. This accu-
sation has been leveled at multinational corporations for introducing
the products valued in the West into other cultural contexts and creat-
ing need where previously it did not culturally exist. Today, we are
beginning to see new products develop that serve the social need exem-
plified in the Brazilian boat ride. Game applications for smart phones
effectively turn the phone into a game board and allow co-located
friends to play a game together passing the phone-as-game board back
and forth among themselves.
Problems with Internet privacy provide another example of a
possible new product need according to Martin Ortlieb, an anthropol-
ogist at Google. Based on interviews over a two-year period in Ger-
many, Switzerland, the UK, and the US, he concluded that Internet
users were asking themselves two questions: (1) “How should one
behave and interact on the Web?” (2) “What kind of behavior can one
expect from one’s partners in the online communication/interaction/
transaction spaces from Social Networking to Online auctions and
from Email and instant messaging to blogs and reviews?” (2011:311).
Users were not sure what the etiquette should be in their own behav-
ior and what the guidelines should be for situations that cross over
from online to off-line communication. They were fearful that they
could not trust the strategies they use to protect their online transac-
tions or space. Ortlieb learned just how much fear there was about the
Internet and privacy.
He determined that part of the issue came down to how online
relationships are structured. The predominant model is one of “concen-
tric circles of social distance” in which private, family, friends, and pub-
lic are typical levels of protection built into Internet sites. These simple
levels do not express the intricacies of user experience on the Web. Ort-
lieb listed six work-arounds users were putting into practice to give
themselves more control:
1. Lock-down, Restriction, Withdrawal. Short of not using the
Internet at all, Ortlieb found that users limited their use. For
example, they might put their Facebook profile on the most
restrictive settings or not use Facebook at all.
2. Splitting Your ID. Users tried to compartmentalize their
Web-life by using different e-mail addresses for different pur-
poses, for example one e-mail for eBay, one for family, one for
newsletters and subscriptions.
96 Chapter Seven

3. Separating Domains. Users made an effort to keep their off-

line life far from their online life by, for example, picking up eBay
purchases in a parking lot or having them mailed to a P.O. Box.
4. Manual Individual Control. Users manually tried to pre-
vent problems by deleting their browser history each time they
closed the browser or searching the Terms and Conditions in
any Internet site contract for possible hidden charges and
downloading these contracts into a Word document before
agreeing to them.
5. Hope. Ortlieb detected a true note of anxiety among users
regarding password protection. All commented on the difficulty
of remembering many passwords and provided examples of
how they managed this password proliferation problem, for
example always using the same password or keeping a pass-
word list on their computer. They were aware, however, of the
dangers of their lax password habits. In focus groups, they even
exchanged ideas with each other on how to improve their pass-
word safety. Lacking a good solution, users fell back on hope,
the hope that their poor password protection habits would not
lead to their passwords being detected by hackers.
6. Different Measures for the World than for Me. Throughout
the research, Ortlieb noticed that users expressed dismay at
the inappropriate Internet behavior they feared from others on
the Internet while doing some of these same behaviors them-
selves. This included reading their ex’s e-mail entries or surfing
to find out personal information about others that could cause
them problems (2011:314–317).
Ortlieb concluded that his research uncovered a need designers should
tackle. The concentric circles of private, family, friends, and public were
too simplistic, and users would welcome more nuanced approaches to
controlling access to their information online. The issues of identity
protection and confidential information were too complex for the cur-
rent methods websites were using.

Redesigning Old Products

The importance of observing human behavior is underscored in
Lucy Suchman’s study of human–machine interaction (Suchman
1987). Suchman begins by looking at what may seem an unlikely group
of humans in an unlikely place: she looks at sailors on the high seas.
Tapping previous anthropological research, she describes Thomas
Gladwin’s (1964) work comparing Trukese navigation of the open seas
with European navigation of the open seas. Europeans take to the seas
with a charted “course,” a plan, which they use to determine their every
move. If forced “off course,” they first alter the plan to remedy the situ-
Design Anthropology 97

ation and then strive to follow the alteration to get “back on course.”
They attempt at every turn to stay “on course.” The Trukese, by con-
trast, never set a course. They have an objective, a place they eventu-
ally wish to end up. To get there they respond to situations as they arise
and consider wind, waves, fauna, stars, and the sound of the water on
the side of the boat in determining any “next move.” There is never a
plan for reaching this end destination; decisions are made as they are
needed. At any point in time, the Trukese navigator could tell you his
objective, the place he wishes to reach, but not his plan, the course he
will follow to get there. Suchman suggests that the European and
Trukese navigators represent two different views of human-directed
action and that more frequently than we realize we operate in the
Trukese fashion. To understand human–machine interaction, one can
look at Trukese-type behavior.
In working to develop more helpful instructions for the operation
of copy machines, Suchman videotaped pairs of machine users attempt-
ing a complicated copying task. To complete the task, users were
required to turn to the machine’s “expert help system,” a computer-
based system in which the copier displayed instructions for humans to
follow in completing copying tasks. The expert help system of the copy
machine had been developed under the assumption that the humans
using it were working through a plan in the same manner that Euro-
pean navigators follow a charted course. However, by observing the
ways in which humans in real situations figured out what action to
take next in interacting with the copy machine, Suchman found they
operated more like the Trukese. They based the next step on what they
had learned from their last action, not necessarily on what the expert
help system prescribed. Her detailed analysis of human–machine
interaction demonstrated some of the problems humans encountered
when trying to follow the expert help system and why it is so difficult
to create one that is foolproof. This allowed for better expert help sys-
tems to be developed.

Evaluating Existing Products

A related area of research to product design is product evaluation.
Squires was asked by a large international firm to evaluate the useful-
ness of desktop conferencing equipment for its Information System
Services Division. She did so by testing the usefulness of two types of
desktop conferencing equipment. In one case, individuals in diverse
locations could use a whiteboard (software that lets you collaborate in
real time with others via graphic information) on their computers to
communicate ideas during a conference. In the second, a video camera
was added to this situation so that they could not only communicate
with each other but also see each other as well. Squires set up simula-
tion rooms and asked employees in the division to try the equipment.
98 Chapter Seven

She observed pairs located in separate rooms interacting through the

equipment. She also conducted focus groups and online surveys. The
majority of participants said they thought the video conferencing
equipment was the best and was useful; yet she observed that, when
using it, many of them turned off the video portion of the equipment
within the first ten minutes of the conference. Employees assumed they
would use the video component but, in actuality, they did not use it. In
this study the observation phase proved vital. Relying on the focus
groups and surveys alone, Squires would have concluded that video
conferencing worked well. It was the observation that provided her
with evidence to the contrary. On learning these results, the company
decided to delay the purchase of expensive desktop conferencing equip-
ment altogether (Squires 2002).
Alice Peinado, Magdalena Jarvin, and Juliette Damoisel (2011)
worked on a collaborative project with designers and executives from
three banks and two insurance companies to develop a new methodology
for designing bank and insurance products for customers in France.
Most of the bankers and insurance executives came from a computer
engineering background and used quantitative research where custom-
ers were segmented according to age and socioeconomic background, and
products were developed for specific segments. They were confounded by
what appeared to be irrational choices by their customers. Peinado and
her colleagues convinced the bankers and insurance executives that if
they wanted an innovative, design-centered approach, they would do
well to use qualitative research that would put them in touch with the
real users of their products, not just statistical segments. The anthropol-
ogists hoped to show how those irrational choices were the result of spe-
cific life choices respective to unique and individual life stories.
The anthropologists decided to interview “clients,” focusing on two
areas of questioning: (1) “What is money, what associations does it give
rise to—happiness/anguish; richness/poverty; openness/closeness?” and
(2) “How does the representation of money evolve during life and accord-
ing to life’s events—live with/without; earn/lose; primary/secondary
place” (Peinado, et al. 2011:262). They interviewed 18 individuals rang-
ing in age from 15 to 80 with differing life situations and socioeconomic
backgrounds, none of whom were actual clients of the banks or insur-
ance companies involved in the research. The interviews were video-
taped. Additionally they observed daily happenings in three banks and
one insurance agency for one working day each and talked with employ-
ees about their jobs. After the anthropological interviews were finished,
the designers gave the interviewees a booklet for them to note, in words
or images (drawings or collages), further thoughts about money and
about their relationship with banks and insurance companies.
The findings were a surprise to the bankers and insurance execu-
tives. The anthropologists found that there were multiple variables
Design Anthropology 99

that determined the interviewee’s perception of money and relationship

to banks and insurance companies. No one variable determined their
thinking nor did age or socioeconomic level; the interviewees, however,
repeatedly brought up trust, face-to-face interaction, and ethics. They
questioned the role of banks and insurance companies in society. (The
research was conducted in 2010 during the ongoing financial crisis.)
The interviews with the bank workers were informative. The
bank workers explained that their customers wanted personal counsel-
ing, while the bank’s hierarchy demanded sales. The bank workers had
to juggle both. Customers wanted a banker who knew them well and
could give advice based on their specific situations; the bank employ-
ees, on the other hand, were trying to meet sales targets they felt were
unrealistic, and they knew that offering the wrong product to a cus-
tomer could end the trust relationship. To top this off, the customers’
individual situations were different and required unique sets of finan-
cial products. Customers could spot the banker who tried to sell them
the products of the day rather than the products that suited them.
To help the bankers and insurance executives relate to these
actual life situations, the anthropologists used video clips of “real peo-
ple” from the interviews. Ultimately, the designers designed an inter-
active-based interface that allowed “clients to personalize their bank
and insurance information, assess their overall financial situation,
simulate future actions, and dialogue directly with their banks and
insurances” (Peinado et al. 2011:271). Since the banks and insurance
companies were actually all competitors, no new products were devel-
oped as part of this project. Instead, the deliverables were the method-
ology itself, the knowledge from the research and the interactive,
Internet, interface tool.

CONCLUSION

The anthropologist is the new kid on the block in design firms.

While anthropologists’ skills have been recognized only recently as
valuable in this field, designers have been quick to appreciate their
usefulness. Just as in the fields of marketing and consumer behavior,
anthropologists’ ability to get close to the consumer, to let the consumer
formulate the questions, and to see the rich, contextual issues sur-
rounding product use is an ability that makes important contributions
to design research.