Ethnography: Ellen Isaacs at TEDxBroadway

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Forty years ago, if you sat in front of a computer, this is what you would see,

a blinking cursor waiting patiently for you to tell it what to do. If you wanted

to see your files, you would type ls for list, and then it would show you your

files like this. They'd all look the same, even though some might be text, some

might be images. But now if you want to see your files, you just open up the

folder and you look, and you can see some are text, some are images, because

they look that way. If you wanted to move a file from one folder to another, you

would type mv for move, the name of the file, issacsfile.doc, and then something

like .doc/.doc/talks, which is the location of the destination folder local

relative to the current folder. Now you drag the file from one folder to

another. We take this visual display of our files and folders for granted, but

somebody had to think of that. At a time when everybody who used computers typed

those kinds of cryptic commands, somebody had to, first, notice that this wasn't

so easy and second, think of a better way to do it. Someone had to think that

you could draw little pictures of files and folders on the screen and manipulate

them by dragging a little box around on the table top. Well, those people were

Doug Engelbart and Alan Kay. Engelbart invented the mouse, and Kay invented

what's called graphical user interfaces. At the time, Alan Kay worked at Xerox

Park in California, which is where I work today. And in 1971, he said the best

way to predict the future is to invent it, and that's what he did. So this is at

a time when computers looked like this, giant boxes of technology in big rooms,

hooked up to these terminals, which is where you typed those commands. They were

very expensive. So you had to share them, and people would sign up for time on

the computer. So it's not surprising that at a time like this, Ken Olsen, the

head of a very big computer company called Digital, said there's no way anyone

would want a computer in the home. Somebody had to think that you could take all

that technology and compress it into a little box that would sit on the desktop,

and it would be dedicated to just one person's use. So that's something we all

take for granted now, but at the time, that would be extravagant. Well, those

people worked at Xerox Park. And then in 1973, they invented the Alto, the first

graphical personal computer, and that led to the Apple Macintosh, the IBM PC,

and now all the slick desktop, laptop and tablet computers that we all use

today. So we're here today talking about the best of what Broadway can be. And I

think that the reason that I was invited here is that the organizers were hoping

that some of that magic from the early Park scientists is still lingering in the

halls where I work, revealing to me a vision of where you will be in 20 years.

Well, I'm afraid that hasn't happened, but there is one bit of Park magic that I

can share with you, and it has to do with a method that you can use to figure it

out, called ethnography. So let's go back to the 1980s, when a Xerox copier took

up an entire room. There was another Park scientist, Lucy Suchman, and she had

the idea that maybe if you're building technology for people, you should watch

them using it. So she decided to watch some people using a Xerox copier. She

grabbed a couple of her colleagues from down the hall, and she asked them to

make copies. So I'm going to show you a short clip from a video from this

historic video of these two people making copies.

So it turns out that those two people from down the hall are

world-renowned computer scientists. One of them went on to win the equivalent of

the Noble Prize in computer science. So clearly the problem is not that the

people are dumb. The problem was with the design of the copier. Today, it is now

common practice for companies to do what's called usability testing. But back

then it wasn't done. Lucy Suchman had to think of it, and she went further. She

realized that you could observe people, not just to figure out how to make their

products easier to use, but also to figure out what products to build in the

first place. So this practice of observing people in their natural environments

to understand their needs is called ethnography. At the time, it was an academic

practice. It grew out of anthropology. Lucy Suchman was the first one to apply

it to industry. So even today not everybody uses ethnography. Most companies

will try to understand their customers' needs by asking them directly, using

tools like focus groups or surveys. But asking people to tell you what they want

gets you only so far. As the anthropologist Margaret Mead said, "What people

say, what people do and what people say they do are entirely different things."

When people do their jobs or just any ordinary activity, much of what you do

just becomes invisible to you. It's just what you do. But if you watch people,

you start to realize a lot of times people are working around their tools. And

it's these gaps, or problems people work around, that are opportunities for

innovation. But, the thing is, a lot of times when you point them out to people,

they'll say, well, sure, it's obvious that's a problem. But they don't think to

tell you about it when you ask. To notice it, you have to get out and watch. So

I like to think of my job as an ethnographer like this. You sit and you watch

the chaos that is human behavior. And if you're patient, and you watch for a

while, and you have a naive state of mind, you start to notice insights that are

obvious after you point them out. You start to notice the hidden obvious. Well,

how does this work? What is ethnography like? Well, let me give you two examples

from my work. So the last couple of years, I've been studying parking. Now, I

realize parking is an odd place to go looking for technology opportunities, but

we all know New York is especially -- the parking is in the area where there's a

lot of problems and a lot of needs not being met. So to study parking, my

colleagues and I spent a lot of time hanging around on street corners watching

cars parking, trucks unloading, enforcement officers giving tickets. And we've

seen a lot of things you might expect and some that you might not.

So one of the things that we started to notice gradually was the parking signs

and how difficult it can be to tell the one thing you want to know quickly: Can

I park here now in the few seconds you have as you're driving by? So I'm going

to show you a sign for about that amount of time, and I want you to figure out

can you park here now. Let's say it's Wednesday, early in the morning. It's 7

AM. Can you park here now? Okay, let's look again. Okay, this is hard, not just

because there's so much going on, but you'll notice that Wednesday is not

mentioned, and 7 AM is not in any of the time ranges. So you have to infer that

because it's not covered, you can park here, at least to the left of the signs.

Okay, here's another one. It's 3 PM. Can you stop here now? Okay, let's look

again. So the bottom sign says no parking at 3 PM. So that implies that you can

stop. And the top no stopping sign doesn't cover 3 PM. So that implies, again,

you have to figure out that you can stop here. Okay, and here's one more, where

I challenge you to figure out what you can do here at any time. The problem here

is that parking signs focus on restrictions, no this, no that, when what you

want to know is what you can do. Now, when I say it like this, it seems obvious.

But when you go and you ask people to tell you what are some of your problems

you have with parking, they generally don't go complaining and saying, you

know, parking signs are difficult to read quickly as you drive by because they

focus on restrictions. To really understand this, you have to get out and

watch, and it can take a while. Because we were looking at so many different

aspects of parking, the signs didn't really come into focus for us until the

fourth city and over 1,000 photos and videos. Once we noticed it, it was

obvious. So what could you do about this? Well, one

thing you could do is redesign the signs, and so here's one possible way you

could design that second sign. And on the right, you see it's organized by time

of day, from morning through night. So at any time, you can find now, and then

you could just look to the right and see, can I park? Green, yes, red, no,

orange, there's some kind of restriction, like here it's deliveries only. And if

you want to be kind to internationals, you could include symbols. Okay, so

that's one example of how ethnography found an unmet need. Let me give you

another one. So we noticed a lot of times when we we're out looking that were a

lot of loading zones marked by yellow curbs that weren't being used. Here we are

looking for a parking spot, and there's just loading as far as the eye can see,

and not very many trucks using it and, yet we can't park. On the other hand, we

saw a lot of times when trucks were trying to make deliveries and couldn't find

a loading zone. And since they have to park near where they're going to be

delivering, they get creative. So they double park, and they block in cars, both

diagonal and parallel, they park in the median, blocking cars from turning left,

they park in the crosswalk, blocking people from crossing the street, and they

park on the sidewalk. So the problem here is that loading zones take up precious

parking resources and, yet, they don't really meet the need. Again, I point this

out. It seems obvious, but when we talk to people about their parking problems,

they don't say loading zones are inefficient. They say there's not enough

parking. So what can you do about this? Well, what you really like to do is to

have the spots for loading when they're needed and then make them available to

everyone else when they're not. So this is something we're doing right now. We

have built a prototype parking meter that can change its state from parking to

loading, no parking and other states. And since trucks have GPS's -- oops --

they have GPS's, and they know where they're going, we can take a spot and

change it from parking to loading, and then when they come and they park, they

can put it back to parking. Okay, so what does all this have to do with

Broadway? Well, what I'm trying to say is that while I don't know what you need

to do to make Broadway the best it can be, you can get some ideas by using

ethnography. It's a very general tool. We've used it in many different domains:

hospitals, nursing, call centers, retail stores, young people using mobile

devices, lots more, and you could use it on Broadway. So you could accompany a

family as they're spending a day out on Broadway. Or you could watch someone as

they're planning a day or an evening for a night out and a show. Or you could

just hang out at the tickets booth and watch people buying tickets or people

checking into hotels or people choosing a restaurant or window shopping or going

to a show. All those things. And maybe if you're patient, and you do it for a

while, and you keep a naive state of mind, maybe you will discover the hidden

obvious. Maybe you'll be the one to think of a novel idea that people will take

for granted in 20 years. Thank you.