Virtual anthropology

Recently, I read Tom Boellstroff’s book: “Coming of age in second life. An anthropologist explores the virtually human”. The book is an account of two years field work and an anthropological ethnography of avatar life in Second Life. Avatars are virtual personages created and Tom’s avatar was the anthropologist in 2^nd Life, interviewing, observing and, first and foremost, participating in social life.  This resulted in ‘thick description’, useful to understanding social life at Second Life. Tom explained that although it was difficult to tell whether the avatar you were talking to was a man or woman, different persons or human at all, social interaction between avatars in 2^nd Life was ‘real’. Dmitri Williams of the Annenberg school for Communication studied all server logs of 3-D game EverQuest and concluded that gamers are behaving online. Players who live 10 kilometres of each other play five times more intensively than people who live at larger distances (van Ammelrooy, Volkskrant 28 februari 2009).

Increasingly, 3-dimensional virtual platforms are being used by public and private corporations. The VU University, the one I’m working with, has (actually it was dr. Frans Feldberg) build a virtual University in which students can visit different information settings and view teaching examples. Large companies such as the ABN Amro Bank have built digital offices to attract young customers and to try out virtual services. Virtual platforms such as 2^nd Life are designed for social interaction and collaboration. Therefore, it was not strange that practitioners of private construction firms we worked with to reflect upon their practices of collaboration in with public partners suggested to use 2^nd Life. Not knowing much of the platform I started reading about the platform and made myself an avatar. Soon I found myself (my avatar) flying around, talking (typing) with an Italian girl (or someone saying so) about getting around. I tried to drive (sit in it) a parked car, but someone (never seen the avatar) threw me out telling me that I was stealing his car!

In order to facilitate learning of public and private partners we built a simulation game on 2^nd Life centred on a megaproject, the tunnelling of train, road and tram infrastructure in Amsterdam’s corporate suburb Zuid-As. One group played the public office, three others played private construction firms trying out a competitive alliancing tender model. In this model, partners have to collaborate in order to get the best solution for a complex problem, without knowing yet who will get the assignment. Employees (better: avatars) were first trained how to behave themselves at our research island. We had bought the island to have a selected group of people in the project. However, at one stage of the game we had thought of opening up the island for a broad audience to let them make a pubic choice of what the best design would be. This has not been applied yet.

We made a short documentary on the topic and I thought most of the young organisation anthropology students would love this stuff, but to my surprise the reactions were not very enthusiastic. They thought that studying people did not include studying avatars. There were not much anthropologists that would like to be virtual anthropologists, which is a pity. 2^nd Life will maybe disappear but, seeing my daughter using the Nintendo DS to play with her friends, 3-virtual platforms will be helpful in the near future for training and education. And Sony, the ‘owner’ of the earlier mentioned EverQuest was very interested to work with researchers/consultants that could help them understanding their gamers’ behaviour (van Ammelrooy, Volkskrant 28 februari 2009). Is here a new field for applied anthropology?

EU President discusses “social innovation”

I came to this announcement through Putting People First, a great blog for those interested in the social dimensions of design.  The article suggests that European interest in understanding “soft” aspects of innovation — moving beyond seeing progress and innovation as primarily technological in nature — is still strong.

The short article published by the European Commission provides a fairly concise definition of how “social innovation” is being conceptualised:

Social innovation means the design and implementation of creative ways of meeting social needs. It covers a wide field ranging from new models of childcare to web-based social networks, from the delivery of healthcare at home to new ways of encouraging people to use sustainable means of transport. Social innovation can help in the development of better models of eldercare, or in finding new ways to change work and travel habits to cut carbon emissions, or new ways to accompany and support young people in their transition to adulthood. Europe has a great tradition of social innovation and a wealth of civic organisations and social entrepreneurs. Examples of social innovation highlighted during the meeting are an initiative which creates local partnerships to reintegrate socially excluded, homeless or those released from prisons, or leaving orphanage; a European initiative among local authorities, business circles and private initiatives to help young adults without a qualification to reintegrate into a learning and work pathway; a community which has welcomed and rehabilitated socially marginalised individuals and drug addicts.

AAA annual meeting online submissions (and where are those blogs?)

The American Anthropological Association just sent me an e-mail announcing that online submissions and registration for the 2008 annual meeting is now available on their website. It also says:

Notice something new? The AAA has recently launched a redesigned website. The website links to three new blogs: Anthropology News, AAA Public Affairs and AAA Human Rights. Let us know what you think about the site by completing our three-minute web survey.

I like to think of myself as not completely Internet illiterate, since I’ve put up a few websites in my day*, but I swear it took me about 20 minutes to find the blogs by navigating through their website. How do they expect anyone to find the blogs when the only links to them are embedded several layers deep within the website? Aside from that clue, I won’t tell you how to find it — any sleuths amongst you who can go searching and report back here on how long it took you to find the blogs?

Ethnography in Human Computer Interaction

I thought you might be interested in an recent presentation given by Paul Dourish on the use of Ethnography in Human Computer Interaction. It’s a bit of a follow on from his much discussed comments from an earlier Computer Human Interaction (CHI) conference, where he suggested that you couldn’t just simply translate enthographic research into a series of design implications.

The abstract reads:

Many researchers and practitioners in user experience design have turned towards social sciences to find ways to understand the social contexts in which both users and technologies are embedded. Ethnographic approaches are increasingly prominent as means by which this might be accomplished. However, a very wide range of forms of social investigation travel under the “ethnography” banner in HCI, suggesting that there is still considerable debate over what ethnography is and how it can best be employed in design contexts.

Building on earlier discussions and debates around ethnography and its implications, this paper explores how ethnographic methods might be consequential for design. In particular, it illustrates the implications for design that might be derived from classical ethnographic material and shows that these may not be of the form that HCI research normally imagines or expects.

The pdf link is http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/publications/2007/dux2007-ethnography.pdf

(links and story via the http://www.experientia.com/blog/)

Stephen Cox

Smile? :-) or ^-^?

I’m not going to become some sort of advocate for BoingBoing on this blog. But seeing as Nursel recently posted on municipal plans to promote more smiling in parts of Melbourne, I thought I’d mention some recent BoingBoing posts on the cross-cultural differences in smiling.

This article suggests that there are cross-cultural differences in the way Japanese and Americans read facial expressions, including smiles. Apparently the Japanese pay much more attention to the eyes, while Americans are more focused on the mouth. One sign of this is the different emphasis given to mouth and eyes in American and Japanese emoticons: vs ^-^ and vs ;-; (Unfortunately this blogging software has a cultural bias and converts only the American keystrokes into cute little faces, thus making a point about the non-culturally neutral nature of technology).

In a related article, BoingBoing also cites a report that claims that Brits and Americans use different muscles when they smile, meaning that entire nations can have characteristic “looks” to their facial expressions.

These would make a perfect example for an introduction to anthropology unit to illustrate to new students the role “culture” plays in acts that we assume to be “natural”.  And when we are admonished by our local municipality to smile more, we might ask exactly what they mean by that.

Culturally insensitive software

A recent case illustrating the gaps in communication that can occur within supposedly seamless global capitalism:

Doris Moore was shocked when her new couch was delivered to her Toronto home bearing a label that described the dark brown shade of the upholstery as “nigger brown”. Ms Moore is black, and it was her seven-year-old daughter who noticed the label.

As it turns out, the label was produced by translation software used by the Chinese manufacturer. I suppose this is a none-too-amusing example of ‘Chinglish’?
Software can’t cushion a mother’s pain when words fail – World – smh.com.au

An article about Nokia’s cellphone ethnography in Business Week

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/mar2007/id20070314_689707.htm?link_position=link7

High technology meets cultural anthropology: Dr Genevieve Bell

An article has just appeared on the ABC about anthropologist Genevieve Bell, who has just given a keynote address at the Australasian Computer Science Week in Ballarat. She provides an interesting perspective on just what it is a cultural anthropologist can do as an employee of a company like Intel.

The keynote speaker for Australasian Computer Science Week discusses the past and the future of wireless technology trends around the world and across generations.

Her anthropologist mother took her along to live in Aboriginal communities as a child, but Dr Genevieve Bell’s vision of cultural anthropology has a more high-tech approach: her role is ethnographer and researcher for the world’s largest microchip manfacturer, Intel, advising on global trends in the domestic use of technology.But in the spirit of her return to Australia – and Ballarat – for Australasian Computer Science Week, would it be fair to say her job is to tell American technology experts that the world’s users of technology aren’t all American?

“I’ve never heard my job put exactly like that,” she laughs, “But yes, that’s certainly one way of thinking about it. I think one of the key roles for me in my job at Intel is to help bring stories of the world back into the company. One of the jobs for most anthropologists is to tell stories of the people we spend time with, and to really do justice to their aspirations and desires and frustrations by telling their stories back to other people who wouldn’t listen to them otherwise. Often that means yes, I am talking to Americans about the rest of the world, but sometimes it means I’m talking to people from other places about yet another set of places they themselves haven’t been to.”

Read more

Applied anthropology & office paper

Came across this short piece on anthropologist Brinda Dalal working for Xerox laboratories in Canada. Apparently, Brinda spent a fair amount of time ‘dumpster diving’ and discovered that something like 44% of all things printed in an office were discarded the same day. People liked paper documents to work on, to review with others, to take to meetings, and the like, so the days of the ‘paperless office’ forecasted earlier in the age of computers has been slow to arrive.

Check the whole story here.

I’m not sure I agree with the end of the story, however, which does suggest that people are doing more and more of their reading on-line. It would be very interesting to look at the reading habits of younger people, to see if growing up with small screens and home computers made them less likely to print things out. My own experience working in a design office is that computer technology made document production much easier, therefore, we ended up working through some stages of document production on screen, but then would print out several different versions, consuming reams of paper, as we reviewed the documents, checked layout, and prepared them for a final printing. If Xerox does produce a kind of auto-erasing paper that can be reused dozens of times, I think that they might find it does get taken up. If only they can help us remember where we put the paper in our desks…

A positive view of the future of design anthro

I just came across this very positive account on LiveJournal about attending the AAA and the future of design-oriented anthropology and thought it was worth sharing.

Other high points including attending a panel on Design Anthropology and Innovation put on by Elizabeth Brody from GM and Robert Trotter from Northern Arizona university. It seems “Design Anthropology” is starting to gain some serious traction, and I was happy to share my experience with several students from Northern Arizona University’s program in applied Anthropology about this field I work in. [read more]