• by Lydia Loizides , Op-Ed Contributor, July 12, 2006

It seems that my life is a series of transportation events--from work to home to work, to some airport to some city to some business event, back to home, over to some family member or friend's house--all linked together by, none other than: technology. My BlackBerry, my laptop, my cell phone, my MP3 player, my car, the subway, a bus, a kiosk.

Now, wait--hear me out. I am going somewhere with this. As a researcher, product developer and strategist, it is my job to hypothesize, test, develop and implement based on what I believe is needed, wanted, demanded by the consumer. But the other day on my commute home, standing on the subway platform at 125^th Street waiting for the A train, I noticed a mother and her daughter standing next to me. What was fascinating was that the mother (female, aged 25-49) was reading a book while the daughter (female, aged 9-13) was playing a game on a cell phone and sharing the headphones of an MP3 player that was dangling from the mother's purse. Each was connecting with content in their own way, "tuning out" of the immediate physical environment (think New York subway platform in July--trust me, you want to be anywhere else) and "tuning in" to an environment that was providing an outlet of sorts and connecting through technology. Now, while this is not the idyllic scene of mother/daughter time, it caused me to pause--for the sole reason that I couldn't remember the last time I had looked at the world around me. And I mean really looked.

In a previous life, I used to visit retail stores to "observe subjects in the natural environments." What I was really doing was watching and learning how people evaluated and adopted technology at the source. I was what I lovingly refer to as a technopologist: an anthropologist concerned with how people used, adopted and adapted technology in their everyday environments.

Have you ever spent a couple of hours, for example, in a Best Buy on a Saturday afternoon, just watching, listening, learning? I have. And you wouldn't believe what you can take away from the experience. How people frame their questions--do they ask about features first? Perhaps it is price? Do they let their guard down to the salesperson? Does the wife stand back? Do the kids factor into the conversation? How may brands will they look at in the same category before making a decision? Do they mention whether or not they have been researching online about product reviews or head-to-head comparisons? So many observations, so little time.

Which brings me to the crux of this week's article: I am going to challenge each and every one of you to become your own technopologist for a day. Stop and look around you--both in your offline and online world. Go ride a bus: are people using their cell phones? Are they talking? Texting? Gaming? How many have an iPod or another MP3 player? How about a PSP? What are people using in the airport? What accoutrement are parents carrying for their kids? What are the kids packing? What about the business traveler? Are they engaging or disengaging? What are people doing on the plane? Inside the restaurant where you're eating? While standing in line at the grocery store? Or driving in the car?

Then get online--go and observe what people are telling you with the images and videos they are posting. Think I am making this up? There are entire micro-worlds on flickr.com, where people have posted what's inside their refrigerators, what their desks look like, what is inside their purses.

Why does this matter, you ask? Well, if you are trying to design or market a new food product, why not look into peoples' refrigerators? What about a new ancillary computer device that needs to be tethered? Don't you want to see how people are navigating the space around their PCs? Through the power of tagging technology, you can find those nuggets of insight with a good search engine and with a little effort.

And if you feel you are really up to the challenge, design a plan to use the technology that is available to you and your customers. For example, Vichy started a blog a while back, asking customers to blog about their experience with a particular skin-care product. A retail chain used Web cams inside the consumers' homes to see how they were using everything from toasters to electric shavers to cell phones. Why haven't you connected with your customers on their own terms, in their native environment?

You see, part of being ahead of the curve is creating opportunities to observe how consumers are using technology in their everyday lives so that you can make their experience with your product a better one. If you believe you can't build a better mousetrap, then you won't. But I say your competitor will. What do you think? You tell me.