Xerox Research Centre Europe (XRCE): Media Backgrounder (Work Practice Research Area)

Xerox Research Centre Europe (XRCE) is structured into four complementary research areas: content analysis; document structure; image processing; and work practice technology.

The work practice technology area develops a deep understanding of the use of technology in the work setting. This understanding is used to help develop new technologies and ways of working more productively with them. It is a multi-disciplined group, consisting of field workers and computer scientists and one where the research is based primarily upon ethnographic methods of study and analysis. Field studies cover numerous work domains, with the office being the primary focus of interest.

The research in this area is closely linked to the Xerox Global Services (XGS) business group and Xerox Office Group (XOG). The research provides a much greater understanding to both XGS and all Xerox’s business groups of the structure of its customers’ work which in turn feeds back into Xerox consultancy offerings which are better adapted to customer requirements and their work processes.

The observations in the workplace also enable XRCE to be more innovative with the appropriate technologies in order to help Xerox customers. It is through this observation of customers at work that problems are identified, and the need for such technologies as CopyFinder . For example, portable document camera (PDC) technology was created to solve a common issue in the law business. Lawyers often need to access sections of hard copy text that are too lengthy to re-type, but too short to warrant the time and resources involved in professional scanning and Optical Character Recognition (OCR).

The work practice research group applies a specific and unique methodology to understanding how its customers work. It firstly observes the details by ‘living the work’ themselves. This is known as ethnography, and is significantly different from attempting to analyse customers’ work by merely describing it from the outside.

Xerox is currently the only organisation to take ethnography to its next stage of evolution, namely analytical ethnography. In addition to observing and noting what each customer member of staff does, Xerox then analyses exactly the reasons behind each task, and how it fits in with the overall work processes.

Using the example of a print shop, a scheduler might be described as someone who merely organises what is printed and when. He or she ensures that no printing machines are left idle and, equally, that the print shop is not overrun with work. Using ethnography alone, they might be described as someone who processes certain jobs, completes certain tasks, and meets with certain people.

Making such ethnography analytical takes the process one step further by identifying how the scheduler is able to make the decisions they make. This means it takes into account all the other factors the scheduler assesses: knowledge of the different speeds of each printing machine; knowledge of the individual productivity of each member of personnel in the print shop; knowledge of the quirks of each customer; knowledge of how damp weather conditions might affect the paper; how a late delivery of stock might affect the schedule of print jobs and so on.

Related documentation:

• Work Practice consultancy Toolkit
• Portable Document Camera
• CopyFinder

Separate, individual fact sheets are available on all of these technologies and the business issues they solve (see below).

For more information, please refer to www.xrce.xerox.com or contact...