Ethnography, the branch of anthropology that provides scientific description of individual human societies will therefore help the Intel team of scientists study human relationships and come up with ways in which technology become a part of enhancing human interaction. “You have to look high up on the scale by looking at human interaction. So Intel is taking a top down approach and understanding the customer first, instead of the technology,” D’Hooge added.

“Human beings fundamentally do not care about technology. What they care about are the emotions they feel when they use a product to achieve an objective at work or in family life. As a technology company, Intel wants to push the boundaries and think about how we can make our products deliver on this aspect.”

For the company, this also means that fresh ideas can spring up from almost anywhere, which explains why Intel has derived a value chain of research activities that helps the staffers get from stage one to product design and launch. The company also supports a core team of globally dispersed ethnographers, social scientists, interaction designers, architects, engineers and technologists, who focus on studying human interaction and the role of technology.

“We have formulated a model where we have the human values right at the top and cascading down to human needs, user experiences, solutions, systems, platforms, subsystems and the core technology ingredients. All projects need to be evaluated at all levels,” he said.

Linking human value to technology

So how does a company link the two worlds of emotion and technology and build an ecosystem that feeds itself? “The missing link is in the translational layer that keeps the user needs in perspective and uses it to quantify the technology information,” said D’Hoodge.

Intel’s model currently has three components to it – business, technology and usage. Successful products born out of this model are ones that emerge from the intersection of all three areas.

“In the business sphere, the model has to be economically viable, marketable and profitable. In the technology area the products or idea have to be possible to create, possible to manufacture and cost effective. In the usage space, the idea has to be useful to the people, usable and desirable,” D’Hoodge said.

With this methodology in place for every product or innovation, Intel believes that it is able to reach the right target market by catering to target personas.

Shaping the future

User focused study is clearly shaping the way Intel plans to move forward with its technology development roadmap. “The company’s platformisation strategy is a result of user research. Intel has been working on a system of creating value vectors across the key platform areas the company is pursuing – home, enterprise, digital health and mobility,” said D’Hoodge.

So what’s come out of the Intel kitty as a result of this? The company’s new vPro technology launch for business users (offering enhanced remote management capabilities on the PC platform) was a project that stated out as user research. And the newly announced ultra mobile PC (UMPC) that is expected to morph to suite the needs of different communities of people. There’s more to come.