Creating a new media business opportunity and technology platform
Dai Nippon Printing, Co. (Ltd.)
Ethnography in Action

Global publishing company DNP has a long history of delivering information on paper and other materials, yet wants to capitalize on the emerging trend of delivering information in digital formats. PARC ethnographers and technologists worked closely with DNP R&D groups to brainstorm, filter, develop, field-test, and prototype a context-aware mobile platform that recommends information and content about local leisure activities – matched to the user’s location, time of day, and personal tastes.

Designing a more engaging visitor experience
Filoli
Ethnography in action

The Filoli Center is dedicated to preserving and sharing the natural history and cultural traditions of its 20th-century estate, which features a historic house with interpretive exhibits that visitors can explore. Based on observations of how Filoli house visitors naturally engaged with audio guidebooks, PARC ethnographers realized that visitors wanted to listen to descriptive information together and share “listening spaces” with each other. Going beyond mere usability and usefulness, PARC social and computer scientists designed and evaluated an audio guidebook system that could facilitate social interactions between visitors.

Going beyond usability and incremental innovation to target new markets
NEC Display Solutions, Ltd.
Ethnography in Action

NEC Display Solutions (a subsidiary of NEC Corporation) generated over $1B in revenue last year. But the projector industry has matured and, despite the increased number of competitors and need for differentiation, innovations have focused only on incremental improvements or component technologies. The industry is ripe for new product concepts – especially in new markets. By using ethnography to more holistically understand how projectors are used, PARC ethnographers enabled NEC Display Solutions to realize new ways of meeting customer needs and address missed opportunities in a fast-growing market.

Harnessing communal expertise sharing to enhance services
Xerox
Ethnography in Action

Global document and business process management company Xerox had 25,000 service technicians worldwide to help ensure that the machines they were selling to their customers performed as expected. If Xerox could leverage this experience into an expert system that improved the effectiveness of technician services, it would improve revenues, services, and customer satisfaction. By observing what technicians actually did in their day-to-day practices, PARC ethnographers realized that technicians swapped “war stories" to share solutions for the thorniest and most expensive repair cases -- so they developed a "living expert" communal knowledge sharing framework.

Incubating solar cleantech venture on site accelerates its time to market
SolFocus

Realizing that solar electricity would be widely adopted if it were cost-competitive with fossil fuel-derived electricity, the entrepreneurs behind SolFocus, Inc. had developed a promising concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) approach. PARC proposed an improved, smaller CPV design that would be simpler to manufacture and able to convert significantly more sunlight into electricity – essential features for lowering system cost and enhancing appeal. SolFocus subsequently “set up shop” in PARC’s facility, where they expanded their operations and funding before moving to new headquarters.

Pioneering and deploying a breakthrough consumer search engine
Powerset (now part of Microsoft)

The founders of startup Powerset, Inc., were convinced that there had to be a better way to search the web instead of inputting isolated keywords and hunting through a list of results to find relevant information. PARC's natural language technology patents and research collaboration enabled Powerset (recently acquired by Microsoft) to develop and deploy a breakthrough consumer search engine within just 24 months.

Transforming employee learning and customer service practices
Fortune 500 company
Ethnography in action

To better serve customers, reduce training costs, and increase revenue, a Fortune 500 company decided to consolidate fragmented call-center operations and provide a single face to their customers. PARC ethnographers – experienced from immersing themselves in a variety of organizational workscapes – worked closely with the company's corporate training department and employees to co-design a more streamlined and effective knowledge worker learning program that saved millions of dollars in training costs.

Turning a bio-agent detection concept into a field-ready prototype
U.S. Army

The ability to detect bioagents in fluids was achieved by the U.S. Army in the lab, but the ability to do so using dispersed water samples in the field involved greater challenges. To address the gap between existing detection technology and required water safety standards, PARC designed, fabricated, assembled, tested, and delivered fully functional, portable, low-power bioagent concentrator device units within an accelerated timeframe.

Using conversational insights to guide new products
Motorola
Ethnography in action

Global communications leader Motorola designed an ethnography-style study to investigate sharing practices among family and friends so they could develop personalized communications applications that helped people maintain and enhance their social bonds. Through conversation analysis, PARC made people’s relationships to one another visible by analyzing the way phone talk is organized and produced. If technology could identify who people were to each other – going beyond mere quantitative data and mechanics of communications – then one could better tailor communication services to users.