Although IT anthropologists are far from common, some companies and IT shops are hiring them to provide that insight, which in turn helps technologists develop applications and systems that best meet users' needs. IBM computer scientist Eser Kandogan sums up the relationship like this: A technologist can make a tool usable; an anthropologist can make sure it's used.

Kandogan works with anthropologist Jeanette Blomberg, manager of the people and practices group at IBM's Almaden Research Center in California. Blomberg says she and other anthropologists use surveys, focus groups, interviews and observations to learn what people need to do their jobs.

"People who aren't trained as anthropologists often come to solutions very quickly," Blomberg says. "They don't often take the time to ask, 'Why are people doing it that way?'"

At IBM, Blomberg studied how systems administrators did their jobs and found that they developed their own local tools -- spreadsheets, programs and bits of code -- to help them manage their systems.

Based on Blomberg's observations, Kandogan and others designed a program that facilitated the systems administrators' efforts to develop local tools. Moreover, Kandogan's program contained a collaborative element that enables systems administrators to share their individual tools -- a feature that came specifically from Blomberg's observations.