Ethnography: positioning ethnography within Participatory Design

2016

This paper proposes that the blurred line between designer and researcher can have a positive effect on design processes. The aims of the paper are firstly, to show how design ethnography is an emerging field of design practice in its own right, and secondly, to give some examples of how open ethnographic methods have been used in public-facing field research. Finally, to propose some recommendations related to the design of open design-ethnographic instruments and activities. Design ethnography integrates two distinct understandings of ethnography. The first is observational, designers present people with designed objects and observe how they interact with them (Houde and Hill, 1997). The second is shaping, designers give participants unfinished prototypes or sketches and invite participants to modify them (Baskinger, 2010). Designerly ethnography involves methods more familiar to designers than to ethnographers, and may be directed towards more general categories of inquiry than p...

ACM SIGDOC Asterisk Journal of Computer Documentation, 1998

... and managemen0 usually are very satisfied with being confronted with what they often take for granted, As a matter of fact, that has often been perceived as a major result from a de, sign project (see eg Bodker and Kenslng, !994; Kenning et al., 1997; Simonsen and Kensing ...

Recovering Work Practice and Informing System Design, 2000

This paper reflects on our experiences in supporting communication between fieldworkers and the designers of cooperative systems. We have investigated the nature of this communication by using a tool orginally designed to support the representation of software designs to present emerging results of ethnographic material. In this paper we discuss the tool used (the DNP) and the experiences of using the toolkit in the context of design. Our particular focus is on the use of the tool to represents results from a study of a UK financial institution where a series of prototyping exercises was underway.

Empowering Users through Design Interdisciplinary Studies and Combined Approaches for Technological Products and Services, 2015

A few decades ago, a transfer of ethnographic approaches to design and design research started to appear. It generally aimed at helping designers to understand people, their culture, and their usage of technologies in order to design better products. Over the years, designers in their work have repurposed a large array of theoretical concepts, methods and tricks. This chapter reflects on this evolution, and describes the notion of “design ethnography” in order to highlight the specificity of this approach. A project that speculates on the future of gestural interactions with technologies exemplifies this approach.

Communications of the ACM, Vol. 40, No. 7, July, pp. 82-88., 1997

Ethnography originates from anthropology where anthropologists spend extended periods of time with primitive societies making detailed observations of their practices. In a design context the aim of ethnography is to develop a thorough understanding of current work practices as a basis for the design of computer support. A major point in ethnographically inspired approaches is that work is a socially organized activity where the actual behavior differs from how it is described by those who do it. This implies that detailed studies of work must include observations as well as interviews [for example 1, 4, 12]. Blomberg et al. [1] characterize ethnography with four principles and three main techniques: it takes place in natural settings; it is based on the principle of holism, that is, particular behaviors must be understood in the respective context; it develops descriptive understanding in contrast to prescriptive; it is grounded in a member's point-of-view. They use as main techniques observation, interview, and video analyses. Using ethnography in the design of computer based systems has become increasingly prominent especially within the research communities of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), but also within Participatory Design (PD), and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Plowman et al. [9] have recently reviewed all studies using ethnography published within the CSCW literature. In this review, three issues (of particular concern to us) are raised. First, the dominant approach is sociologists conducting the ethnographic studies and informing computer scientists of their findings, such as in debriefing meetings [for example 5, 6]. Second, reports on concrete consequences of a specific design due to such an approach are typically absent. Third, a "need to consider developing hybrid and tailored forms of ethnography which can play different practical roles in the various phases of design" is argued [9 p. 321]. As computer scientists, we have adopted and experimented with ethnography in design [2, 10, 11]. We have developed a method for participatory design where ethnography is an embedded part of the overall design activities [8]. Participatory Design refers to an approach where users play an active part. Users and designers engage in mutual learning activities in order to understand users' current work and generate coherent visions for change [3]. We believe that practitioners can benefit from using ethnography in contextual design (particular when designing systems in a specific organizational context), but they must be aware of the conditions needed for such an approach. This article presents a case from our research in the form of a design project for the Editorial Board of a Film Board (detailed in [10]). The project was conducted in two parts. Traditional techniques like meetings, interviews, document analysis, rich pictures, and mock-ups were used in Part One leading to a first design proposal. In Part Two, experiments with ethno-graphic techniques like observation and videorecording were applied and the effect was evaluated in light of the first design proposal. Here, we present the organization and describe the Editorial Board design project. We spent approximately 14 person weeks over a period of 10 months on the project because it also served as a research project. Had it been a real life consulting job, our estimate would be approximately 10 person weeks.

Brereton, Margot, Paul Roe, Ronald Schroeter, and Anita Lee Hong. "Beyond ethnography: engagement and reciprocity as foundations for design research out here." In Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems, pp. 1183-1186. ACM, 2014.

This paper explores an emerging paradigm for HCI design research based primarily upon engagement, reciprocity and doing. Much HCI research begins with an investigatory and analytic ethnographic approach before translating to design. Design may come much later in the process and may never benefit the community that is researched. However in many settings it is difficult for researchers to access the privileged ethnographer position of observer and investigator. Moreover rapid ethnographic research often does not seem the best or most appropriate course of action. We draw upon a project working with a remote Australian Aboriginal community to illustrate an alternative approach found in Indigenous research, where the notion of reciprocity is first and foremost. We argue that this can lead to sustainable designs, valid research and profound innovation.

Proceedings of the conference on Designing interactive systems processes, practices, methods, and techniques - DIS '97, 1997

Despite the growing number of ethnographic studies of work their use in design remains a matter of some debate.

1997

Designers of interactive systems often work in environments that am continuously changing. External, uncontrollable change is rapidly becoming a daily impedim~t in many designers' lives. In this age of rapid technologml progression and heightened competition, systems designers must be able to prepare for, cope with, and even pdbrm better because of inevitable change. 13ecauM the nature of user interbce design is to make complicated technology usable, user intedltce designers tve especially afkcted by design changes.

The primary way that anthropologists contribute to the design process is by practicing “design ethnography” during research stages. Design ethnography is a catch-all term used to describe an applied methodology derived from numerous approaches to qualitative analyses. Therefore it is only fitting that design ethnographers are currently debating theories and their methodologies, just as early practitioners of qualitative approaches did (and still do). This annotated bibliography was compiled in an effort to understand the roots of design ethnography and ponder its future. It is comprised of works that directly make mention of the method, as well as other works that may relate to tangential topics.

Collegial Design: Thinking and Making at a Community-Engaged University, 2019

Design anthropology is an emerging field in which ethnographic research informs the design process. Design anthropologists provide insights into the cultural worlds of the consumers of design processes , elucidating their true needs and desires, rather than superficial reportage as derived from questionnaires and focus groups, as the first stage of design activity. In this presentation, several classic design process methods are reviewed: QFD (House of Quality). Kano methodology, the Sensys® system , and Design Thinking as promulgated at the Stanford Design School. In each case the positive intervention of ethnographic techniques embodied in Design Anthropology are shown as potential improvements in the quality of design activity.