Watching Hackers Hack in the Native Habitats
Technology and software companies employ a wide variety of specialists, from software engineers to technical writers to user experience designers. Increasingly, though, that roster also includes anthropologists. Listen here:
Technology and software companies employ a wide variety of specialists, from software engineers to technical writers to user experience designers. Increasingly, though, that roster also includes anthropologists. In this episode of the New Relic Modern Software Podcast, hosts Fredric Paul and Tori Wieldt welcome Ali Colleen Neff, PhD, a trained anthropologist and user experience researcher on New Relic's product team. She left academia and brought her skills to tech because she likes to, in her words, “watch hackers hack in their native habitats.” Her goal? To gather useful data about how New Relic users work, and then use that data to “build products that can help our customers resolve their incidents more quickly.” We talk with Dr. Neff about how she uses her anthropology and media background to better understand how people engage with technology and how non-anthropologists can better understand the ways users engage with their products.
“The tools we build serve as an extension of ourselves,” she says. They enable us to achieve in ways that we wouldn’t be able to otherwise. But, she warns (citing media studies leader, Marshall McCluhan), the tools we build to address one problem can simultaneously foreclose other ideas.
Among Ali’s favorite research methods is directed storytelling, which helps us understand individuals’ thought and decision-making processes. Humans make up culture, so understanding individual stories is key to understanding culture. Tune in to catch some thought-provoking examples from Ali’s research.
You’ll also hear:
Journey mapping as a tool to understand user engagement at all stages
How to earn trust from customers
The importance of collaboration between engineers and social scientists
Key elements of successful teams that Ali has observed