Francoise Bourdonnec, a cultural anthropologist, is director of the home experience research team in Intel’s digital home group and her team consists of social scientists and quant researchers, whose job is to “see the world through other people’s eyes” to understand better what people want from their technology. What a great job – talking to people and finding out how to improve tech for their day to day lives. I spoke to her to find out what she does day-to-day and how she thinks women are being targeted as technology consumers in the 21st century.
Francoise, tell me about how you learn more about what consumers are after?
By doing fieldwork, which includes visiting homes around the world, spending time with families to understand how they think about technologies and their homes, encouraging participant observation and design experiments, and bring that information back to Intel to deepen the corporation’s understanding of consumers – how they live, what matters to them and to understand how technologies are used, understood and imagined around the world. We then work with Digital Home Group to define the experiences and technologies that will fit into people’s cultural/social values and practices.
How did you come to be a cultural anthropologist?
This is actually a second career for me. I had an interest in anthropology during college, but made a career in operations at Intel. I decided to go back to grad school for an anthropology degree when I realized that anthropology was a way for us to do a better job of targeting technology to consumers…not just improving products ‘for technology’s sake’ but to ensure that the improvements resulted in better, easier to use products. As luck would have it, that is when Intel expanded its hiring of social scientists (there had been social scientists at Intel for about 10 years in the labs) as product groups decided that anthropologists and other social scientists could help create better products. So for me, it was a great opportunity to keep working at Intel and put these new skills to work – and it has been a great experience.
What stands out in your findings during your time at Intel?
I work in the Digital Home Group – which focuses on interactive television, so much of our research has been focused on understanding how people view televisions and internet technologies. The thing that surprised me most was how much people around the world LOVE their televisions: they are part of the family, they are omnipresent, they have many functions (entertainment, distraction, reward) and they are dearly loved. TVs are often the only ‘acceptable’ technology for social areas like the living room. When we started this research, we thought the focus on TV might be stronger in the US – but that has not been the case: our record for TVs in a home was in the UK – 11 TVs in 1100 square feet. They weren’t all plugged in, but still… We have seen them in every room in a house. And our challenge is to make sure that as we add interactivity to the TV, we don’t break the experience that people love so much.
What do you think of the way technology is targeted at women? Is it changing?
I absolutely think it is changing. First, there is a recognition that women are interested in technology on a par with men – it’s not just a “guy thing”. They own as much technology as men and they are increasing influences in consumer electronics, gaming, social networking and internet use. When you add to that women’s growing earning power and their role in purchase decisions (the Consumer Electronics Association estimates that women influence 60+ per cent of consumer electronics purchases and, especially in emerging markets, they are often the majority of decision maker for purchases such as televisions, media players, DVD/cameras…) – they are absolutely a key target for technology manufacturers. Especially since – at least in the US - women spend about 20 per cent less than men on consumer electronics products – and they are 25 per cent less likely to consider such products ‘good value for money,’ according to the Consumer Electronics Association.
So there’s a greater focus on understanding what women want from technology – and responding to it. This can be anything from ergonomics to women’s approach to technology (grounded in multitasking – women want technology to do its job well, to work reliably, to be easy to set up and to not need debugging!) to where technology is sold (traditional tech stores are perceived as very unfriendly by most women). So we see efforts like Sony’s successful digital cameras targeted at women, stores created to appeal to women, and products that deliver on their promise with minimal effort (and that make it clear what it is they do). That means a good out-of-the-box experience and intuitive user interfaces – and sales support (often online, since when shopping women gather more information than men) to help make a good decision.
We’re also seeing more attention paid to technology style – and no, that doesn’t mean pink: women like black and silver technology too! But it does mean that tech products have to look good and be ‘customizable’ to their owners’ style.
I’d like to point out that while many of these things are important to women – men benefit from them too. So I suspect solving the problem for women will make for happier consumers overall (think Oxo goodgrips – made to address grip issues, and comfortable for everyone). Do I think manufacturers are there yet? Not quite….but they are definitely making progress.
There is a growing awareness of the importance of women as consumers. That means that companies are focusing on ensuring that women are represented in consumer groups giving feedback during the development process, and are doing a better job of targeting the issues that women care about in advertising their products. Women tend to care less about technical specs and more about whether technology will get the job done, and they are much less willing than men to ‘de-bug’ technology to make it work. So ensuring that products are easy to set up and use, and communicating what products do rather than what they are becomes key. For example, a site like www.my-laptop.co.uk that helps women figure out what technology will do what they want is much more targeted – and helpful – than a spec sheet. And we now see technology advertising in a wider range of media, and showcasing women as users – while demonstrating what the technology enables (so a camera is not about the lens, it’s about preserving memories).
So there you have it – women want targeted, well designed technology that is straightforward to operate, does the job and isn’t pink. Thanks for your time Francoise.
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