FALL/WINTER 2007
Possessed printers and the user experience
Computer science department invites an Intel anthropologist to
illustrate the vast nature of the field.
Intel researcher Genevieve Bell sat quietly in the living room of a 500-square-foot high-rise apartment in Singapore observing the behaviors of a family who had recently installed their own wireless network. Everything was wireless and in sync: the printer, stereo, speakers, everything. And then it happened.
The printer became “possessed,” Bell says, printing things never-before seen, things that weren’t even on the screen. Eventually it printed something with a name on it, so Bell and the family walked the hallways of the apartment complex knocking on doors until they found the culprit.
“You got a wireless network, didn’t you?” Bell asked the stranger. He had.
The printer’s behavior, though, and people’s interaction with it was exactly what Bell was there to study — how do people use technology? Wireless routers are designed to fit the average home footprint of an American home, about 1,700–2,500 square feet. But in Singapore, that average is about 500 square feet. “We’ve created a technology that brings with it an expectation about domestic life that isn’t going to be realized,” Bell told Purdue students and faculty earlier this year.
The Department of Computer Science invited Bell, a senior principal engineer and director of user experience within Intel’s Digital Home Group, to illustrate the expansive nature of computer science and what it involves — people and culture in addition to software systems and hardware.
“Genevieve’s talks on ethnographic research give a view on the use and impact of technology that many computer scientists don’t realize,” says Susanne Hambrusch, professor of computer science. “She looks at technology from a user’s perspective. Her work sends the message that information technology is for everyone and used by everyone, and that in order to improve and design effective technology, all members of society need to be involved in building and creating it.”
Bell, an anthropologist, runs an interdisciplinary team of researchers who help Intel identify what consumers want and how they use technology. Intel then uses those insights to drive new technology. She and her researchers have spent time in more than 1,000 homes around the world gaining these insights through observation of informal, unstructured activity. 
Want to hear more about Bell’s work? You can watch her presentation, “Just Like Magic: Anthropological Accounts of Wireless Technologies,” at www.cs.purdue.edu/news/video.
— Kristal Arnold