"User Anthropologist" Article in NY Times

There's already a lot of buzz about the April 13th New York Times Magazine article that prominently features the role of field research to inform design.  Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty? follows Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase in Ghana.  While the article is great for introducing the benefits of corporate user research to a mass audience, it is also tactially valuable in describing some of the field research and design techniques employed by Nokia.

For example, even when apparently traveling light, Chipchase relies on high-end reliable equipment:  "Pretty much wherever he goes, he lugs a big-bodied digital Nikon camera with a couple of soup-can-size lenses so that he can take pictures of things that might be even remotely instructive back in Finland or at any of Nokia’s nine design studios around the world."

Nokia not only conducts field research for gathering information, but a form of user-driven field design:

"Nokia’s temporary design studio sat in a rented two-room concrete hut at the intersection of two busy dirt lanes, across from a woman selling chunks of watermelon and peeled lemons and next to a large water tank labeled “Church of God.” There was a sheet of fabric strung up in front, with neat painted lettering that read: “Your Dream Phone. Share it with the world.” It went on to describe how the community was invited to come share ideas and drawings for the ideal mobile phone. Prizes were offered. So far, 140 people had shown up to sketch their dream phone."

And on-the-fly feedback on product concepts: "Each time the group stopped to chat with someone, Burns pulled out several prototypes — or “physical sketches,” as he called them — for potential phones, handing them over one by one for examination."

Overall, the article validates that common user research techniques done in context, can provide revealing information to drive design.

Also, see Chipchase's blog, Future Perfect.