Microsoft has state of the art usability labs and most products go
through lab testing. It is somewhat hush hush that I am an ethnographer
(let alone a sociocultural researcher, god what's that?) and my job
title is Usability Specialist. I do the day to day work of a usability
specialist and sociocultural analyses evolve as a layer of
interpretation that "floats over the top" of these other duties. My
reports are distributed, with different information going to different
audiences. This is how I experience my job here now and it is working
out very well with the support of my manager, Michael Muller. Our group
is particularly interested in becoming involved early in design cycles
and he brought me in to support that effort. Lab testing is done after
the fact of design and is often just clean up.
Access to participation in design is highly protected and I am moving
very slowly. I first had to develop trust among my usability group so
that they wouldn't be afraid of my interventions or what they call here,
recommendations. I've managed that and have begun to cultivate
relationships with members of the development teams (testers, project
managers, UI designers, user education specialists mostly, no luck yet
with marketing) for the projects to which I am assigned.
I have also been attempting to form relationships with "consumers" both
inside and outside of Microsoft and this has proven to be very
difficult. The technology that I am looking at and the "consumer
situations" do not bring me into contact with communities as much as
with individuals. My contact with consumers has often involved just one
visit with a person using some of our technology and then follow-up
e-mail or phone calls. I've done some experimenting with forming
relationships with users but really, this work is just beginning. I'm
looking for opportunities to work with a user community but the products
to which I have been assigned aren't promising in this way, yet.
I wouldn't use the word colonize to describe my forays into the field
and this word gives me much food for thought. Do ethnographer's
colonize? Hmmm. So much effort is being put to making sure that we
don't. My approach is to learn how informants are using technology in
the context in which they use it and bring that information back to the
development team along with an analysis and recommendations on how to
make the product more usable. Does technology colonize? Colonizing may
be an appropriate word for Microsoft's marketing strategy, they do
funnel money into businesses in efforts to create what you could easily
think of as a distributed country. There are profound problems in
forming collaborations with these companies I think in part due to the
fear of being colonized. You know Microsoft is called "The Borg." I
find this to be very interesting territory but I don't have access to
it, yet. May I know what you were you thinking?
I am currently working on a paper for the Usability Professionals
Conference 98 in collaboration with Sarah Zuberec that we'll be able to
share. It won't be as theoretical as the XMCA audience would like I
don't think. It is called, Effective Design Team Participation in User
Studies: The Beta Buddy Fieldstudy. The other papers that I have
written here are proprietary unfortunately. I could work up a paper on
ethnographic practice and sociocultural analyses in support of
technology design if you think it would be of interest to the XMCA
community. Meanwhile, I will keep writing a paper in mind as my work
progresses. I welcome your guidance on what would be of interest.
Best regards and it is nice to be in touch with the group again.
Cynthia
Cynthia DuVal
Usability Group
Consumer Platforms Division
a-cynduv who-is-at microsoft.com
425-882-8080 ext.22339
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Cole [SMTP:mcole who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 1997 8:25 AM
To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: "Cynthia DuVal (RhoTech)"
<a-cynduv who-is-at microsoft.com>
That's fascinating, Cynthia.
What sorts of relationships does doing ethnography for microsoft
lead you into? Instead of colonizing the natives, ethnographer's
will now colonize local consumer/users.
Any reports of this work available for folks to read?
mike