by Jeremy Allen
LIFT Conference, Geneva - 08 February 2008 | 09:00
Intel does not just employ microchip engineers. In order to get a finished product that fits customer needs, it showed at a conference in Geneva how it has been sending teams of social scientists into the field for the past decade, and why that makes good business sense.

The conference called LIFT, which is held in Geneva and is in its third year, has attracted over 600 people, all of whom share a common interest - technology and the digital world.

This event provides a forum for exchange of ideas, and all attendees have realised that if you are to succeed in the digital business world, you have to know what others are doing. In addition, not only should you know what potential customers want but, more importantly, what they will want in the future.

This is how Genevieve Bell, one of the speakers at LIFT 08, helps her employer Intel to develop its products. She is not a microprocessor engineer but, perhaps surprisingly, an anthropologist. For the last decade she and a team of social scientists have registered the every move of targeted users of mobile phones and computers across the globe, to assess what they might want in seven to 10 years' time.

Bell carries out these studies by going into people's homes to observe them but, interestingly, also visits temples, market places, sports clubs and even cricket matches. "Mobile technology finds its way into many dimensions. "You want to see what people are doing in all facets of their lives - not just in the obvious ones," she says.

Has she had any surprises in her research? Yes, mobile phones in Muslim countries that tell you the direction of Mecca. This, she says, is now common place, although it was not five years ago when she visited Malaysia. Had she not discovered this feature (which works thanks to software on the phone), this would never have shown up on one of Intel's surveys.

So what will people want in the future? According to Bell, much the same as now, but with more demands. "The bar has been raised on all technology companies to think about ease of use. Consumers will pay for aesthetics, they'll pay for style, a lot of them will pay for cool and they'll especially pay for something that just works." She adds that consumer demands among women have had a huge effect on how such products are designed. Bell says many women want a product that comes out of the box and works immediately. "The technology industry's been a bit slow with regard to women. Making something pink just isn't enough."