Life as a Corporate Ethnographer
Let’s start with the basics. What is Ethnography?
Generally, it’s the study of human behavior in any setting. For example, an ethnographic study I have participated in before is the observation of a sub-culture.
As an ethnographer, my job was to observe and take notes on a specific subset of people. I chose to narrow my focus on a specific group of gamers, individuals who were part of the gaming community for Super Smash Bros, Brawl. While studying this sub-culture, I observed their values, norms and attitudes towards one another. I was able to record several interesting points, one including that each dedicated gamer valued their controllers. As I dug deeper, I studied their attitudes.
Since the gaming sub-culture is largely dominated by male players, the majority of them had negative views of female gamers. For example, many male gamers believed that female gamers were not as talented as themselves.
So why does this study matter? An ethnographers main attribute is to have the patience to observe human interaction, and another important skill is to be able to narrow your study. There are billions of people on this planet, meaning there are millions of cultures, sub-cultures, and interactions for ethnographers to study.
Recently, I obtained an internship at a medical publishing firm called Wolters Kluwer. Wolters Kluwer is a global information services company. The company has dozens of sectors internationally, and I was assigned to the Health administration. One major focus of the company within the Health sector is technology. For example, one technology through the company called Emmi works to allow patients to receive personalized messages or calls from their providers encouraging them to participate in methods beneficial for their health.
This technology works to increase a personal connection between health care providers and their patients by urging them to seek proper care and to lead a healthier living standard.
Another technology that focuses on clinical drug information, called Medi-Span, provides quick screening and access to drug content such as pricing and reimbursement data. Essentially, this technology would make a physician’s job more efficient by having up to date and accurate information at their fingertips, whenever, wherever.
According to Santee, “Anthropology breaks the dichotomies: person — object, humans — tools, user — designer, company — consumer. Anthropology reframes these relations, bringing processual understanding of the constant moving forward of creation and human reinvention.” (Santee, 2) Santee explains in her article that anthropology and design are codependent on each other. There is a need for anthropology in design to answer several questions, such as “Are people going to use it as intended? How is it going to affect the context where it emerged? What new skills are people going to develop due to this design or creation?” (Santee, 2)
Similarly, in this corporate setting my job as an ethnographer is to examine how consumers treat these technologies and how they implement them within their lives. Since there is little face to face interaction involved within this ethnographic context, I would be relying on data to analyze the effects and outcomes these technologies are having on the consumers. For example, one thing I would be looking at is the popularity of these technologies. I would track program purchases and reach out to patients to analyze whether the quality of their patient care has truly improved or not. Since we are living in an era that is exponentially growing in technological use, services of corporate ethnographers are growing rapidly so that corporations can determine how their products are being used.
