Thirty years ago, an anthropologist called Lucy Suchman set out to study a problem that bedevils a great deal of offices: why do so many employees struggle with technology? Suchman spent several months watching how workers interact “in the wild” (aka around the office) with devices such as photocopiers and computers — and then compared this with what the engineers and designers said was supposed to happen with those pesky machines.
The results were intriguing — and highly relevant to Silicon Valley today, as it reels from the current “tech-lash”. For Suchman realised that there were fundamental problems of epistemology, or frameworks of knowledge. And these problems are even more pertinent in today’s workplaces, which are awash with computers, iPads, printers and other digital gadgetry.
When engineers think about technology, Suchman observed, they tend to visualise it in terms of a logical, sequential processes. No wonder: anybody trained in science looks for rational, overarching structures and patterns (engineers will typically read instruction manuals sequentially, before even switching on a machine). Unfortunately, most office workers do not think this way — they barely bother to read the instruction manual. Instead, they tend to dip in and out of devices, learning to use them by copying their colleagues.