Cell-Phone Makers Calling On Anthropology For Design Help.(A)(QA)

Byline: Peter Benesh||

Investor's Business Daily

Technology has a habit of running ahead of its intended customers. Visionary engineers can make futuristic products, but can't always make them easy to use or even comprehensible to the consumer.

The wireless industry is among those that must improve product design to meet customer needs, says Baltimore-based Context Research. The firm uses anthropologists rather than market researchers to study how people use technolo

gy.

Its latest report, "Wireless Opportunities: A Global Ethnographic Study," is based on interviews with people in nine cities around the world. The firm's principal …