Video has been used by anthropologists and ethnographers since the turn of the 20^th century. Robert Flaherty famously filmed native Eskimos in the 1920s. Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson started making films in Bali in the 1930s [5]. Because these films show tasks like bathing a baby or teaching a young boy to use a bow and arrow, they could be placed into a very broad definition of user-centered design research.

For the earliest examples of movies made with the express purpose of improving technology or designing new technology, the best example is the work of Lucy Suchman, an anthropologist, whose work at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in the 80s and 90s focused on particular workplaces (an airport, a law firm, a state department of transportation) to combine the study of technologies-in-use with the design of new prototype systems. After conducting ethnographic fieldwork in a workplace, Suchman produced a film showing office workers struggling to use a Xerox copying machine. The film was shown to researchers and engineers at Xerox, and it led to significant changes in interface design, including the addition of the now ubiquitous large green button that allows users to quickly and easily make a copy [6].

Early ethnographic video at Intel Corporation includes footage shot in 1997 for the "Anywhere at Work" study conducted by John Sherry and Tony Salvador who were in the People and Practices Research Group at that time. The study focused on workers who spend their time away from the standard PC desktop or, in some cases, workers with no access to a desktop PC. The video showed how poorly suited the PC was to many different kinds of jobs and included a fisherman in Alaska who duct-taped a laptop to the side of his fishing shed so he could wirelessly transmit data about fish weight to the salmon cannery and the Alaska Fish and Game Commission.

Another People and Practices project to use video extensively was "Connected Consumer Applications" or "Con Con Apps." The study was conducted by Eric Dishman, Scott Mainwaring, and John Sherry in 2000. The researchers videotaped and interviewed approximately sixty families about their entertainment and communication habits and needs, and the footage was logged, digitized, and stored in a searchable online repository. The video was used in brainstorming sessions to develop concept prototypes, and during "informances" with live actors performing scenarios based on the footage of real people shot in the field. This video-based project had such a large impact at Intel that it influenced the decision to put people in Intel's ad campaigns—campaigns that up to that point were purely tech-centric. The project also was instrumental in the establishment of Intel's Proactive Health Strategic Research Project because so many of the study participants spoke about the challenges of caring for aging relatives. That project led to the formation of the Digital Health Group division [7].

Other uses of video at Intel Corporation for research or resulting from research have included "Visions of the Future" videos. Scenarios and experiences witnessed in the field are scripted and then dramatized by actors. The videos have a connection to ethnographic data because they are grounded in situations that were observed by researchers in the field. They are more highly produced, and the content is more tightly controlled than footage shot in situ. "Visions of the Future" videos are very effective communication tools, but they lack the spontaneity and nuance of documentary-style video footage of real people living, working, and playing in their own, unique surroundings.