An experience I’ve been meaning to share since the end of December concerns the Human Terrain System (HTS). Dr. Henry Delcore at California State University, Fresno, invited me to act as a judge for a class debate. The question of debate was, “Should the American Anthropological Association (the main professional organization for anthropologists in the US) discourage anthropologists from working in the Human Terrain System program?”

The debate was part of their final requirements for passing the course, and I thought it was a new and interesting method of engaging the students. It was evident that it was also effective in getting the students to really research not only the HTS system, but also techniques and etiquette of formal debate. One reason it was probably effective is that if you weren’t fully prepared with a firm knowledge of the information, it would have been pretty embarrassing when it came your turn to speak! The students had excitement, healthy competition, and seemed sincerely interested in the topic and task at hand.

I was very impressed because the student’s arguments were so good that I assumed that they got to pick sides ahead of time and that they chose the team that represented their own personal viewpoints. I found out after the debate was over that the students were asked their personal viewpoints ahead of time and purposely placed on the team to argue the alternative viewpoint! Kudos to the students for being so objective and convincing even when they were debating a viewpoint they did not personally support! In addition to this, I found myself constantly analyzing which team was in the lead, and I found that it swayed many times. In the end, the team arguing the negative came out ahead, but it was certainly a close call.

One of many major points of arguments came when the team arguing the negative viewpoint said that the HTS system is a new program and therefore has the opportunity to make positive changes in our military and in reducing harm. They argued that it was up to those anthropologists accepting positions on the HTS teams to develop the HTS program into a program that is positive, transparent, and which upholds high ethical standards. The affirmative argued that this was not possible because of environment and situation, and due to the fact that the anthropologists would be associated with the military, dress in military attire, and would have to carry weapons. This, they argued, prevented the anthropologists’ ability to be seen as a neutral party. The debate went back and forth, both sides making strong points.

I believe that activities like this are such a great way to capture the student’s attention and to get them really passionate about researching a topic. As a former and future student, I know that I am certainly more satisfied, excited even, when an instructor implemented new methods of graded activities rather than just sticking to the typical lecture, reading, examination routine. I was so impressed with the students’ excitement, I even found myself wishing to join the debate!

I had the opportunity to attend the 2008 EPIC conference in Copenhagen, Denmark last October. A hot topic there was the use of “Personas” in usability research, with the idea that it was an effective and quick way to communicate the results of the research to the client. Personas are fictional characters developed as a representative of the research subjects as a whole in order to identify the characteristics/patterns of the subjects and as a way to “get to know” the company’s “typical” customer on a more intimate level so that the company may make better operational decisions to fit the majority of their customer’s needs and wants.

This was a somewhat controversial item because, in my group at least, half of the anthropologists disagreed with the effectiveness of a personas. The argument was that personas are just characters, and although they are developed from real anthropological research, they are still fictional. Those who supported this viewpoint suggested that the actual research data should be reported to the companies in lieu of persona (confidentiality protected of course). After all, why should someone make up a fictional person when real living people had been studied and could serve as [more valid] representatives? They believed that the clients should view the data of the real consumers in order to get the most effective results.

I certainly understood the viewpoint of those anthropologists that supported presenting the actual data rather than a representative character, however, I personally support the viewpoint of the companies/researchers that use personas. I’ve heard, and although I have no first-hand experience with clients consulting with me for usability research, and from the explanations provided from the Copenhagen research companies I visited, I believe that personas are an important and effective mode of communication of the data from the researcher to the client. The reason I take this stance is that companies, and more importantly the executives with the ability to commission such research, usually have absolutely no time, or often desire, to read some long drawn report of findings or statistics. This is why they hire consultants to do the research so that they may gain the intimate understanding of their customers without having to expend their non-existent time researching it themselves. There are critical pieces of that data that they do need to take the time to review and I’m not saying they need not receive a full report of the research results, however, having a persona allows them to “get the point”, so to speak, of who exactly their typical target customer is and what their needs and frustrations are, in a very brief amount of time. And I believe the reality is that many of the executives will not read the full research reports because of time, disinterest, or other factors and therefore making the efforts of the whole project useless because without implementation it becomes only interesting [but operationally ineffective] information. As an Office Manager for a non-profit organization, I certainly understand, from experience, the lack of time available to do this research, even though it would significantly impact the quality of the operations or client services. Furthermore, personas are an easy tool to communicate research results to employees.

As a side note, the EPIC participants were able to visit multiple that do usability/business research projects. Copenhagen has many of them and they are highly respected. The ones I visited did projects for the Denmark hospital system, police force, and a variety of other organizations. There was also a wide variety of company types/projects that these companies were hired to do research for. That says to me there is great hope for the future of this type of research.

As part of my research for the project, I’ve done participant observation with three different research subjects, observing remote control use. When I first began the project, remote control use seemed like something that was so very basic and mundane. I did not know what to expect because this was my first time doing this type of research. All of my previous research was conducted in public spheres. I was nervous about entering these individual’s homes, and wondered whether my observations could produce any useful data that would benefit the team’s project. However, I decided that the best way to go about it was to just jump right into it with the goal of observing the activity and environment as if it were the first time I had witnessed anything like it.

Currently I’ve completed three of the five planned observations and I have been pleasantly surprised at the results. Since I went into the environment not knowing what to expect and deciding on just writing every detail I could observe, each observation session actually ended up resulting in data that inspired new ideas for our team to research regarding product design, capability, and service. During the initial observation session I left with the research subject a design activity in which they used various shapes put together with Velcro in order to represent their ideal remote control design. This activity ended up creating valuable discussion with each of the research subjects which also inspired ideas for our product design. For example, after each of the subjects created their remote control designs they proceeded to explain each part of their design and its function. All three research subjects described their designs as simple, despite the fact that all three varied greatly in the number of functions and in the technological complexity that would accompany a true proto-type of their design. Using these three research subjects as examples, we were able to get a small glimpse of the vast amount of differences that product users might have.

While the project is still on-going and there is much work to be done, I believe that the experience of doing this type of observation in a more intimate setting (an individual’s home) has given me more confidence in doing this type of research. It will be interesting to see what further research will inspire.

            Our project is very dependent on the curriculum of the engineer majors because this is their senior project and they must create a working prototype by the end of the school year in order to graduate. I originally saw this as an obstacle that would only exist in a college program like this one. Due to the attachment of the project to their pending graduation, I felt like the engineers were very cautious, sometimes only focusing on simply getting a very basic working apparatus, rather than a prototype that was more representative of our team’s research and design recommendations. Everything seemed to be contingent on “if we end up commercializing it”, rather than “let’s give this a try”. Their apprehensions are certainly understandable!

Now, as I think about the situation in a different light, I’m thinking this may be a lot closer to what I may experience in the future when working in consultation with other people or companies. Time and resources are always a major concern. Rather than seeing this as an obstacle needing to be removed, I see it as a learning challenge on my part on how to create a good communicative environment with the team and try to represent my research and recommendations in ways that will also include possible solutions on how to address time sensitivity and limited resources. I certainly do not have an answer to this, but it is a constant learning experience for me.

I tried researching “inter-disciplinary teams” online to find out examples of how other teams are working together, at other colleges and within business and organizations. The only articles I could find were regarding inter-disciplinary teams working together within the medical field. I’m wondering if there are other resources where I can find articles relating to this, and examples of how similar programs are operating at other universities.

The other one is the poorly named NationMaster.com statistics site. The name is somewhat ironic when you realize that their initial and primary data set comes from the CIA world factbook. However, Dr. Evil overtones aside. It really is a wealth of statistics on a wide variety of topics, from agriculture to lifestyles. You can get raw data, you can create comparisons, and it will generate graphs to make the data a little easier to digest.