Design Plus People: An approach to interaction design projects

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.

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.

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 ...

PREFACE 4 FOREWORD 7 USERS IN DESIGN 11 DESIGN ETHNOGRAPHY? 29 FIELD RESEARCH & DESIGN 45 PERSONAL STANCES 69 CASE STUDIES 83 CONCLUSION 117 APPROACH 120 LEXICON 123 BIBLIOGRAPHY 128 3 BEYOND DESIGN ETHNOGRAPHY HEAD -Genève (Geneva University of Art and Design) is proud to present its publication Beyond Design Ethnography: How Designers Practice Ethnography Research edited by Nicolas Nova, Professor within the Masters program in Media Design. Although discourse on the origins of design varies according to the different historiographical approaches, it is clear that for several decades now the design research community has been gradually setting out its own markers in the establishment of a scientific discipline. Through stimulating dynamics that combine interdisciplinary approaches and design's constituent elements to develop disciplinary legitimacy, this book represents a new milestone in the short history of design. Starting with the concept of ethnography in its postcolonial sense, it proposes a holistic approach to the added value of that which could be called "ethnographic praxeology" in design. We wish to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to Nicolas Nova and to the authors for the complex intermixing of fieldwork, theoretical reflection and graphic representation of all this combined knowledge. Our thanks go to the research team, comprising Lysianne visiting lecturers at the University. Our gratitude also extends to Fabienne Kilchör, a member of the research team, and to Sébastien Fasel, both former students at the University and now regular contributors, for their remarkable graphic design work and data visualization.

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.

Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 2003

The community of "appliance design" rests generally upon a successful use of multidisciplinary user-centred design and often draws on an ethnographic component. Much has been made of the need for a multidisciplinary team and of the difficulties of making good use of ethnographic outputs in such a team. Discussions often centre upon the precise placement of the boundary between ethnography and design and the possibilities of hybridisation of these disciplines.

Ethnographic methods have become an important tool for interface designers over the last 30 years. However, as ethnography has been adapted to interface design, virtues of the approach have been lost. Based on the development of ethnography within anthropology, we highlight problematic issues in contemporary use of ethnography within interface design. The case study performed was planned based on the anthropological critique of how ethnography is performed within design. In the case study the timing of field insights were analyzed. Based on the findings we propose four issues which have been neglected in the ethnographic work of the interface design community thus far. These four issues make up a new ideal for ethnographic research in interface design: being properly prepared, analyzing the data properly and starting early, allowing the fieldwork to take time and finally the importance of getting first hand data.

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.

Design Studies, 2000

International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 2000

The methods of ethnography and cognitive psychology are frequently set in opposition to each other. Whilst such a view may be appropriate in defining pure, or prototypical, classes of each activity, the value and necessity of such a distinction is broken down when researchers are goal-directed to study complex work domains in order to foster technological change. In this paper, we outline a rapprochement of these methods, which we term cognitive ethnography. The value of qualifying ethnography in this way is to emphasise systematically the differences between ethnography as a radial category and the kinds of legitimate method used to study work practices which are often referred to as ethnographic, but which in practice differ in important ways from prototypical ethnographic studies. Features of cognitive ethnography such as observational specificity, verifiability and purposivenes challenge many of the tenets of a pure ethnographic method, yet they are essential for studies that are undertaken to inform technological change. We illustrate our arguments with reference to a project to develop a tool for supporting design re-use in innovative design environments.