By Forrest Glenn Spencer
10 Questions: Reece Dano
A CHANCE ENCOUNTER AT AN SLA STUDENT RECEPTION LED REECE DANO TO HIS "DREAM JOB" WITH A DESIGN CONSULTANCY THAT HELPS COMPANIES BETTER UNDERSTAND THEIR CUSTOMERS.
SLA member Reece Dano, 31, is a Zibite and is proud of it. Zibites are what the employees of Ziba Design call themselves. Reece is among the new generation of special librarians who serve in corporate settings but do not necessarily call themselves corporate librarians because they perform tasks and duties that may not be found in traditional definitions. He serves Ziba Design as an information specialist and specifically as an independent, embedded research consultant within the firm.
Q: Tell me about Ziba Design. What does it do?
Ziba is a strategic design consultancy focusing on developing innovative product experiences for consumers. We're headquartered in Portland, Oregon, with independent offices around the world. Ziba's areas of design expertise include products, human-computer interaction, environments, communication design, and design research and planning. We assist companies in aligning their values so that their product design and branding converge to create an authentic and meaningful experience for the customer. We design everything from household goods to consumer electronics to retail services.
Q: What does your job at Ziba entail?
The information services group supports industrial designers, graphic designers, human-computer interaction designers, architects and ethnographic primary researchers. We provide services to the management team, business developers, creative directors, and top executives. Each of these groups occupies different areas of our building, so we've created small physical satellite libraries within each group in addition to the online resources we provide. We're constantly trying to surprise and delight the teams with new publications and media meant for creative inspiration.
Q: What do you do on any given day?
Primarily, as a secondary researcher, I'll work within Ziba's Consumer Insights and Trends group, which plans and provides the ethnographic research that helps the company ascertain the functional and emotional needs of consumers. It's these insights that provide the basis for product and experience design.
I also work to identify the global, market and consumer trends that are likely to influence design in the near- and long-term future. My job is to help generate hypotheses about consumers by analyzing relevant secondary market and consumer research. I make sure the group does not reinvent the wheel by duplicating existing academic or market research.
Next, I comb through the vast amount of user-generated information that individuals post online on social network sites and community message boards. It's not unusual for me to spend 40 to 60 hours reading sites like Facebook or Twitter to gather and analyze information on how 20-something mothers think about sustainability.
This information provides the framework for how our primary researchers will go out into the field to test their hypotheses. Sometimes, for the more complicated projects, I'll go with the primary researchers to help interpret their observations in real time within the context of the existing research. Our goal in all of this is to create a close dialogue with internal and external clients.
Q: Who are some of your clients?
Procter & Gamble, Nike, Dell, Harvard Pilgrim, FedEx, Intel, Microsoft, Whirlpool, Umpqua Bank. We've built a lot of trust with our clients--for example, we've had a relationship with P&G for more than 13 years. We do a lot of work in connection with their household goods. They trust our research process, and they've taken some cues on how to make information transparent on the Web, especially the social Web.
Our research is about how to emotionally connect with consumers, and our clients have to understand what this means. Therefore, we have to foster close relationships with our clients.
Q: Can you provide any examples of your work with clients?
I remember we worked with a company that was having difficulties with compliance for a medication that older women were using. We felt they were talking to these women in the wrong way, and we wanted to understand why. To do so, we reviewed the generational experience of these women in the context of how medical paradigms changed over their lifetime. Our goal was to get at the collective reminiscent experience of these women.
Our review included the ways in which doctors and medicine were represented in American culture and society and how the politics of health changed during the feminist movement. We looked at old advertisements, government filmstrips, popular books on health such as Our Bodies, Ourselves--a wide range of materials. After our analysis and evaluation, the secondary research alone provided us with deep insights that helped us frame our ethnographers' subsequent discussions with these women.
Q: As a natural extension of your research duties, I understand you also help the company's business development team identify new opportunities.
That task is not limited to summarizing market reports or investigating companies; it includes training and instructing client relations personnel to gather their own competitive intelligence information through tools like RSS feeds and news alerts. Teaching people to fish doesn't necessarily reduce their hunger--it just makes them come back to you with even more nuanced and intriguing questions. That's when we know we're doing our job right.
Q: You joined SLA as a student member in 2005. How did you get involved with the association and especially with the Oregon Chapter (ORSLA)?
I was enrolled in a distance MLIS program at the University of Washington. I learned about ORSLA through one of the school's electronic boards. The chapter was hosting a student reception, with a discussion session featuring a panel of local information specialists. It was there that I first learned about employment options outside of the public or academic library domain. When I heard librarians like Cindy Romaine discuss buying shoes in Japan for Nike as a routine task, and Gretchen Leslie of Lattice Technologies explaining her approach to competitive intelligence, I was enthralled.
A few months later, I attended ORSLA's annual dinner and met Abby Margolis, a primary researcher at Ziba Design. She spoke about the Ziba ethnographic research process. From that moment, I wanted to work at a place like Ziba.
Q: I understand you're an active chapter member.
During my last year of school, I served as the chapter's distance program representative at the university. My job was to communicate about events sponsored by the chapter to students across the Northwest. It was a great opportunity.
I also helped plan two student receptions. In fact, at the reception in 2007, I met Gretchen McNeely, one of the panel members, who mentioned that there was an information specialist position opening at Ziba. I applied, and a few months later I was employed by Ziba Design. It's been my dream job.
Q: Have you attended any of the SLA annual conferences or participated in any of them?
I've been to the conferences in Denver and Seattle. I hope to conduct a conference presentation one day with my colleague Gretchen about topics we know well, such as scenario planning and forecasting future trends. I believe those basic strategies can apply to special libraries everywhere.
Over the last four years, I've become actively involved in ORSLA. Our members primarily reside in Portland, the communities in Corvallis, and in the Willamette Valley. Right now I'm serving as the chapter's membership chair. The chapter is pursuing professional development opportunities and discussing new tools, like how social technology can provide better research or different insights. That topic will be in favor as we move forward.
Q: What do you think of the SLA membership?
I enjoy the openness. I remember how I was introduced to several SLA librarians at corporations across the country. They would take the time to listen and speak to me, even though I was a student. That practice has influenced me to reach out to students in our area, to foster mentorships and help them think about building new information centers and services for companies that may not know how much they need them.
I'm eager to watch how the organization will transform itself in upcoming years as we regain our technological and ideological leadership within the information economy.
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