The project
Mobile Media 2015 aimed to use a hybrid archaeological/anthropological/ethnographic/foresight methodology to develop scenarios for the experience of media in vehicles in 2015. Accompanying these were technology roadmaps and recommendations for Chrysler Group.
As a kind of applied archaeology, the project conceived of archaeology as much a way of thinking about how people get on with things, as fieldwork focused on the remains of the past.
So, what do archaeologists offer? - expertise in understanding relationships between people and things in interdisciplinary and transhistorical study - holistic thinking - "archaeological" thinking.
Some general points/premises
- We confirmed and adopted a premise associated with the concept of performativity - that what you do (such as buy and use certain cars and media devices) makes you who you are.
- Frequently marketing and industrial design assume the opposite - that who you are (defined by demographic and cultural attributes) makes you behave in certain ways.
- The power of theory. Bringing together these diverse methodologies and institutional contexts (engineering, corporate management, academic research, ethnography, marketing, archaeology, foresight) required translation and facilitation. Theory (anthropological, organizationsal, social, cultural) was a major bridging device.
- Consider the project as a unique variation upon the age old contrast of "ancient and modern"
- Design thinking benefits enormously from lateral/oblique views and strategies - archaeology's long term and anthropological perspective offers a powerful way of achieving this
- Anthropological archaeology focuses on the materialities of everyday interactions - process, identity, the material of the social fabric, emotional design
- A focus on scenario building is an effective component of such a hybrid methodology
- the challenge - how to get organizations thinking in new ways about people and goods
- one set of issues here concerns organizational culture/discourse/paradigms in both the corporation and the academy
- a specific context/background to the project was Chrysler's "Wheels Network" - a diverse consultancy group put together by Peter Wolff (DCX)
sample and data
literature research (popular, academic, trade); qualitative interviews and quantitative analysis; expert interviews (in industry and the academy)
key findings
- digital and IT media technologies are mostly in place - typical and familiar topics in media technology, such as compression, bandwidth, processing power, storage, are no longer the key issues in media experiences
- innovation will increasingly be incremental
- we are coming into a new period where key changes in media are going to be about convergence, integration and particularly - elegance
- the next "killer app" will be something concerned with convergence and elegant integrated experience - seamless experiences that connect car, home, office, vacation
- media devices do matter more and more - they are key discriminators of car brands because of the experiences they offer
- media use patterns are going to change rapidly over the next ten years - therefore needs will change fast too
- technology is shifting fast - therfore look to infrastructures that can handle that change
- to understand the patterns and changes, look not to demographics but to use - look at people's performances with media
- user needs - consumers create needs through using media - design things that people may like rather than thinking "this will answer a need"
- many user desires are going to be about socializing - look to social media in the car experience of the future
- change in product architectures require changes in organization - more modular and flexible corporate architecture/organization, innovative dealer relationships, strategic relationships with other relevant companies
- for forecasting therefore look to tipping points for standards and infrastructures
what did the project uniquely offer?
- cultural ethnography - not just market research, but analysis and interpretation of user needs, desires, and experiences
- expertise in grounded/validated research-based knowledge
- expertise in transhistorical understanding of change, use, design, innovation - we were not held down by local transient issues
- we were outside a corporate environment - with different views on things
- fast diagnosis of key issues was made on the basis of much wider domain knowledge and understanding of people's behavior, wants, needs
- this broad grounding is especially useful for forecasting and foresight
what did we take away from the project?
- the hybrid methodology worked - interpretive, analytical, foresight
- interesting collisions of organization culture and paradigms - and insight into how to manage them
- the power of theory - this enabled the hybrid methodologies and scope
- an important role for narrative scenarios
The final presentation - 
Mobile-Media-2015.ppt
