Collaborating on ethnography & design research: center for ethnography & contextual innovation at HFI

ABSTRACT

Human Factors International Inc. (HFI) is a 100 people, $13 million user-centered systems integration company, with a mission to improve the interactions that people have with computers and other digital systems. HFI offers end-to-end solutions for Web/Intranet and Internet-based applications, Software Applications, IVR Systems, Handheld Devices, Telemetric, Public Service Networks, Medical and Automation Equipments and help make our clients' existing offerings more user centric, optimized and efficient. In the wake of the recent interest of research and development for business innovations for the emerging markets and products & services for new markets, we are in the process of establishing ethnography and design research as a service area along with the existing areas of activities & services. HFI's interest in this area is reflected through a few successful collaborations with research initiatives launched by global corporate as well as academic institutions, e.g. HP Labs, Nokia Research, NCR, Media Lab Asia [6] etc.In this extended abstract we will elaborate on some key issues regarding successful research collaborations. We will also discuss the lessons learnt about carrying out such collaborations and jointly leading a multidisciplinary research team with early participation in the overall project planning.

REFERENCES

• 1: Bill Gaver , Tony Dunne , Elena Pacenti, Design: Cultural probes, interactions, v.6 n.1, p.21-29, Jan./Feb. 1999 [doi>10.1145/291224.291235]
• 2: Gaver, W. (2001): The Presence project. RCA CRD Research Pulications. London, U.K.
• 3: Sanders, E. B.-N., and Dandavate, U. (1999). Design for experience:New Tools. www.sonicrim.com/red/us/pub.html
• 4: Frohlich, D.M. & Girish Prabhu (2003), Hewlett Packard Laboratories: Fueling the ethnographic imagination by design. Contextual Invention '03, Bangalore
• 5: David R. Millen, Rapid ethnography: time deepening strategies for HCI field research, Proceedings of the conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques, p.280-286, August 17-19, 2000, New York City, New York, United States [doi>10.1145/347642.347763]
• 6: Kaushik Ghosh , Tapan S. Parikh , Apala Lahiri Chavan, Design considerations for a financial management system for rural, semi-literate users, CHI '03 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/765891.766014]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.m Miscellaneous

General Terms:
Human Factors

Keywords:
contextual innovation, culture, design research, emerging market, ethnography, research collaboration, sustainable business model innovation