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Descriptive Research in End User Computing: Embracing the "D Word" to Understand End User Innovation

Although end user computing appears to be enormously widespread and important, we do not have a detailed, data-grounded understanding of who end users are, what they do, or how they use computers to innovate. To develop that understanding, we need to do detailed descriptive research. We need to understand the ways in which corporations are structured and ways to segment the end user community into groups that are likely to have different needs and different paths to innovation. In marketing, we say that the customer is “the familiar unknown.” Although businesses think about customers all the time, marketers have learned over time that they cannot understand customers unless they do broad research on them. The same need exists in end user computing research. This paper discusses statistical data on occupational employment to give a broad picture of the diversity that exists among end users. It then discusses why we must reconceptualize organizational structure before we can understand the diversity of end users. Finally, the paper discusses a research project design to develop an understanding of organizational structure and of end user issues and innovations in a professional services organization.