Genevieve Bell, corporate anthropologist at Intel, answers :
But the job is mainly to help the people who design our products to better understand those who will use them.
That involves getting out into the office, into the field, and into people's homes to ask questions about where technology empowers them, where it frustrates them and to learn about the diversity of experiences they are having with technology around the world.
And about studying cars, where they expect more of tomorrow's computing technology to go into:
We've been in Singapore, Malaysia, China and Australia asking people to let us turn out the contents of their cars: front to back, glove compartment, doors, in between the seats, under the seats, boot (trunk) and everything.
We put it on a tarpaulin and photograph it, a little like an archaeological dig.
We want to get a better understanding of the role that content plays in their lives and where computing technology might intersect with that.
In Malaysia and Singapore, for example, we were surprised to find people kept "ang pow" packets (envelopes of money given at Chinese New Year and thought to be lucky) in their cars all year round.
In a sense, people there were using their cars to keep them socially safe, not just physically safe.
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