Intel’s Sharp-Eyed Social Scientist – NYTimes.com

And now for something completely different.

Interesting article about Intel’s Genevieve Bell, an anthropologist who is Intel’s resident tech intellectual (director of user experience research at Intel Labs), who brings the real world user experience perspective. I liked the analysis of cars and technology as the user experience in many cars leaves a lot to be desired:

As they [Dr. Bell and a colleague] traveled from country to country, asking drivers about how they used every object in their cars, the pair developed a messier counternarrative to the tech-idealized version. Although carmakers have embedded voice-command systems and the like in their vehicles with the idea of reducing distracted driving, the researchers found that when drivers were bored in traffic, they often picked up their hand-held personal devices anyway.

“What became clear was a couple of things: how much technology people bring to cars, how much they were ignoring the technology that was built in, and how much that technology was failing them,” Dr. Bell says.

Intel’s Sharp-Eyed Social Scientist – NYTimes.com.