Design Ethnography in Capstone Design: …dalyresearch.engin.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/...Design Ethnography in Capstone Design: Investigating Student Use and Perceptions*

Design Ethnography in Capstone Design:Investigating Student Use and Perceptions*

IBRAHIMMOHEDASUniversity of Michigan, Department of Mechanical Engineering, 2350 Hayward St, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA.E-mail: [email protected]

SHANNA R. DALYUniversity of Michigan, College of Engineering, 210 Gorguze Family Laboratory, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.E-mail: [email protected]

KATHLEEN H. SIENKOUniversity of Michigan, Departments of Mechanical & Biomedical Engineering, 2350 Hayward St, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109 USA.E-mail: [email protected]

In today’s global markets engineers need to design products for a wide variety of stakeholders and cultures. Engineeringstudents, therefore, must learn how to design products that meet the needs of the stakeholders and are appropriate for thecultures inwhich theywill beused.Human-centereddesignguides students indevelopingdesign ideas that achieve this goal.This approach has proven to support innovation, increase product uptake, reduce errors, and focus the design on the userexperience in addition to product functionality.Design ethnography is an important component of human-centered designand has been shown to be eÄective for understanding the true, and sometimes hidden, wants and needs of stakeholders andfor informing design decisions. While the utility of design ethnography has been promoted within business and productinnovation literature, student learningofdesign ethnography techniqueshas lackedstudy.This exploratory studysought toaddress this gap by characterizing the ways students use design ethnographymethods during a capstone design experienceas well as their perceptions of these methods within their design projects. Design report documents and semi-structuredinterviews were used to explore student practices and perceptions. Students used various design ethnography techniquesincluding interviews (both structured and semi-structured), informal conversations, observations, and surveys. Thesewereused throughout the design process (from problem definition to testing and validation), however, the methods were mostfrequently used when defining the problem, developing user requirements, and translating these into engineeringspecifications. Although there were numerous instances of successful uses of design ethnography, the focus of this studywas on obstacles encountered when implementing these techniques to inform their design decisions. Semi-structuredinterviews revealed that students perceived both benefits of and frustrations with using design ethnography. However, thebenefits that students perceived were often superficial in nature and the frustrations they encountered often stemmed fromthe challenges associated with open-ended problem solving. The results illustrate the need for the development of eÄectivetools and pedagogy to support students when learning and practicing design ethnography.

Keywords: design ethnography; human-centered design; user-centered design; design pedagogy; immersion; capstone design

1. Introduction

Numerous reports have called for engineering stu-dents to develop the ability to design innovativesolutions to today’s increasingly complex problems[1–3]. Truly innovative solutions are not only crea-tive, but also practical in the context of a culture andits people [4]. To meet modern challenges, theengineering design field has expanded from a func-tion-centered view to include a human-centered(sometimes referred to as user-centered, althoughsomemakedistinctions between the twoapproaches[6, 7]) view of design processes, where the focus is ondeveloping the full experience between the user andthe product [7]. In a review of human-centereddesign definitions, Zhang & Dong characterizedhuman-centered design as having an emphasis onthe individuals involved, developing a holisticunderstanding of them, involving all stakeholdersduring all design phases, and developing useful,

usable, and desirable products [8]. A human-cen-tered view of design encourages designers to prior-itize the needs and wants of the user. However,developing this understanding and applying it tothe design process requires the use of systematicmethods. One such method is design ethnography.Design ethnography evolved from the ethno-

graphic techniques developed by anthropologists[9]. Adapted for use by design engineers, designethnography attempts to understand and representthe perspectives of daily life and defines approachesfor understanding the actions, words, and thoughtsof users and stakeholders in order to inform designdecisions [10–13]. Design ethnography data collec-tion includes observing users while they interactwith products of interest or as they go about theirregular activities in a particular environment andinterviewing users and stakeholders about theirpriorities, experiences, and preferences. Anotherimportant aspect of design ethnography is the use

* Accepted 1 March 2014.888

International Journal of Engineering Education Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 888–900, 2014 0949-149X/91 $3.00+0.00Printed in Great Britain # 2014 TEMPUS Publications.

of the collected data to inform design decisionsrelevant to users and stakeholders as well as thebroader design context.Design ethnography methods can be used

throughout all phases of the design process includ-ing defining the problem, understanding the voice ofthe customer, translating the voice of the customerinto requirements, generating solutions, and devel-oping and evaluating the end-product [14]. A keyadvantage of design ethnography methods likeobservations and in-depth interviews is thatdesigners have the opportunity to discover needsand problems that are not otherwise obvious to thedesigner or even the user. Users accustomed toperforming a task in a particular manner may notbe conscious of the problems or deficiencies andtherefore may not be able to express these problemswhen outside of the environment of use. By placingthe researcher into the users’ environments andexploring the ways the users engage in daily life,design ethnography data collection methods canremove biases and pitfalls of self-reporting, becausethey allow direct examination of users’ potentialneeds. In addition to allowing the design engineer toexplore human-device interface constraints, designethnography enables consideration of the potentialdevice’s emotional, psychological, cultural, andsocial impacts, which are too rarely discovered viatraditional market research. Another key feature ofdesign ethnography in a global marketplace is itsability to bridge gaps between cultures and allowdesigners to obtain tacit knowledge relevant toproduct design [15]. The importance of obtainingcultural understanding of a target market to aid inproduct design has been increasing as firms try todesign for particular cultures that are diÄerent thantheir primary market [16–18]. Products that aresuccessful in one context may fail to be adopted inanother due to cultural diÄerences. As an example,one can look at the failure of Kellogg to eÄectivelypenetrate the Indian market because they didn’tfully understand the habits and preferences ofIndian customers during breakfast [19]. Indianconsumers traditionally make their own breakfastin the morning or consume biscuits and tea; break-fast cereals have not historically fit into Indianconsumer habits.One early documented use of design ethnography

sought to increase the usability of products manu-factured by Xerox. Observing customers’ use ofcopy machines in actual oÅce environments ledthe firm to develop instructions that guided userssystematically through problems like paper jams[20]. Design ethnography also plays an importantrole in the design of software interfaces where theabilities and skills of software engineers usually farexceed those of a typical user; design ethnography

helps bridge the gap between the expert user whodesigns the software and the typical customer whoeventually uses the software [9].Design literature has documented various

approaches to design as well as novice to experttrends in executing design skills [21–24]. However,while the benefits of design ethnography have beendiscussed within business and product innovationliterature, few studies have focused specifically onthe development of student design ethnographyskills. Prior work has intimated that students havediÅculty performing design ethnographic investiga-tions and incorporating the results into theirdesigns. In a study of graduate student designers,Sugar found that the students’ designs changed littleafter performing usability testing and engaging withusers [25]. Even though the students claimed thatusability testingwas abeneficial tool, it failed to leadto major changes in their designs. Students tendedto focus on overt usability problems faced by theusers and were not able to identify the underlyingissues that led to those overt problems. In a study ofuser engagement as part of a technical writingcourse, Scott discovered ‘‘tensions’’ between stu-dents’ preconceived notions of the value userengagement and their practical diÅculties withimplementing user engagement [26]. As theirdesign projects progressed, students became moreaware of the complexities involved with significantuser engagement and responded by minimizing theways in which they interacted with users. In a studycharacterizing students’ understanding of human-centered design, Zoltowski developed a frameworkthat described how student designers experiencedhuman-centered design work, representing lesscomprehensive understanding, i.e., complete lackof appreciation for stakeholders, to more compre-hensive understanding, i.e., developing significantrelationships with stakeholders [27]. While thesestudies provide valuable insight into students asdesign ethnographers, there are still manyunknowns in the process of developing studentsfrom novices to more informed design ethnogra-phers. Our study was motivated by this lack ofresearch on the learning process as well as byindustry’s increasing use of design ethnography.

2. Research design

2.1 Study purpose

A thorough understanding of how engineeringstudents currently perform design ethnographyand how they subsequently incorporate the infor-mation gained into their design processes is neededif engineering programs are to develop eÄectivepedagogy in this field.

Design Ethnography in Capstone Design: Investigating Student Use and Perceptions 889

Our study was guided by the following researchquestions:

1. What design ethnographymethods do studentsuse to help them make design decisions?

2. What perceptions do students have on thevalues and challenges in using design ethnogra-phy techniques?

To address these research questions, we used a smallnumber of design teams and a qualitative approach[28–32]. Qualitative approaches provide importantinsights into engineering education and gatheringrich and detailed data is particularly appropriate foran exploratory study [32]. The study was approvedby the Institutional Review Board of the Universityof Michigan.

2.2 Participants

Three diÄerent student design teams, which wetermed Teams A, B, and C, participated in ourstudy. Table 1 describes their composition. Allparticipants were senior undergraduate engineering(mechanical or biomedical) students. The mechan-ical engineering students had a minimum of twoprevious design/manufacturing courses, while thebiomedical engineering students had not necessarilytaken a specific design course. During the course,Teams A, B, and C worked in groups of four todesign a medical device for use in a low- or middle-income country using a divergent-convergent

design process that included the development ofuser requirements and engineering specifications,concept generation, concept selection, engineeringanalysis, prototyping, and validation.During the summer prior to their capstone design

course, Teams A and B participated in an eight-week immersion program in one of two low- ormiddle-income countries, where they conductedclinical observations and interviews in hospitalsand/or clinics. Their goal was to develop at least100 need statements, one of which became the basisfor their capstone design course. Upon deciding ona need statement, the students proceeded to developuser requirements using observations, interviews,and surveys during the remainder of their immer-sion experience. This experience forced Teams Aand B to employ design ethnography extensivelyduring the front-end design phases (prior to thebeginning of their capstone design course). Furtherdetails of this immersion experience can be found inprevious publications [33–35]. Team C did notparticipate in an immersion experience prior to thecapstone design course. Inclusion of three teamswith diÄerent levels of exposure to design ethno-graphy provided diversity with respect to theirexperiences during the capstone design course. Forexample, students on Teams A and B interactedwith significantlymore stakeholders (on the order ofhundreds) than the students on Team C (on theorder of tens).

Ibrahim Mohedas et al.890

Table 1. Team composition and capstone design course projects

Team DemographicsImmersion ProgramExperience Capstone Design Project

Team A 4 male, mechanical engineering Yes Surgical device for middle-income country

Team B 1 male, mechanical engineering1 female, mechanical engineering1 male, biomedical engineering1 female, biomedical engineering

Yes Diagnostic device for low-income country

Team C 3 male, mechanical engineering No Surgical device for middle-income country

Fig. 1. Timeline depicting semi-structured interview schedule.

2.3 Data collection

The primary data were collected through two semi-structured interviews with each of the three designteams. Team interviews were conducted at themidpoint and endpoint of the teams’ design pro-cesses; each interview lasted approximately onehour. Fig. 1 shows the timeline of design interviewswith respect to the course.As part of the course requirements, Teams A, B,

and C delivered four reports throughout the seme-ster detailing the work accomplished. The studyteam analyzed the reports in order to characterizestudent use of design ethnography and extract themajor decision points encountered during thedesign process. Decision points were defined asjunctures during the design process when designteams considered multiple options or when asingle option was presented with some form ofjustification. These decision points became themajor topics of discussion during interviews. Forexample, themajor decision points discussed duringthe first interview were related to user requirementsand engineering specifications developed by thedesign teams. The major decision points discussedduring the second interview included design conceptiterations, changes to user requirements and/orengineering specifications, and modifications totheir design plan as a result of validation testing.During both interviews, decision points were usedto guide the discussion and elicit information abouthow students used design ethnography to informdecisions. When a student mentioned the use ofdesign ethnography in making a decision, extensivefollow-up questions were asked to determine whatmethodswere used, how themethods specifically led(or did not lead) to a decision, and how eÄective oruseful the students thought the methods were. Thisinterview protocol allowed the study team to probe

students’ use of design ethnography while avoidingleading questions that might imply the utility ofdesign ethnography at decision points.Table 2 lists example questions that formed the

starting point for longer discussions of each team’sdesign process. These questions were based uponthe decision points identified during the designreport analysis and developed to determine theinputs and outputs of students’ decisions. Interviewquestions were discussed among the research teamin order to ensure clarity, suitability, and to ensurethat questions were not leading. Table 3 lists exam-ple follow-up questions that allowed the study teamto gain a deep understanding of each design team’suse of ethnographic methodologies. All interviewswere audio recorded and transcribed for analysisusing Nvivo 10 [36].

2.4 Data analysis

We used an iterative inductive coding procedureduring data analysis. Theme identification followedguidelines established for analysis of semi-struc-tured interview data [28]. The inductive approachrequires that themes emerge from the data andtherefore, preconceived themes were not specificallyidentified, consistent with how Strauss and Corbindescribe emergent theory [37]. The analysis soughtto identify the students’ perceptions of design eth-nography, as opposed to the study team’s percep-tions of the students’ use of design ethnography.The first round of coding consisted of identifying allreferences about or related to collecting, synthesiz-ing, or applying ethnographic information. Thespecific design ethnography methods used and thetypes of decision points to which they were appliedwere noted and used to characterize student prac-tices. Additionally, the exploration of similaritiesand diÄerences among the coded segments revealed


Table 2. Example questions asked of design students during interviews

After having developed the long list of need statements, how did you decide which would be your top choice?

How did you decide which user requirements you would include? What led you to these requirements being the most important?

It seems you had diÅculty developing engineering specifications from user requirements, what aspect of this task was diÅcult? Whatresources were most helpful in overcoming this challenge?

Whichuser requirements provided the biggest challenge to develop?Howdid youovercome this challenge andwhat resources did you use?

Which engineering specificationswere themost diÅcult to quantify?Howdid youovercome this challenge andwhat resources did youuse?

What information sources did you use during the course of making this decision? Which one was most helpful? How did you know youwere making the right decision?

How has your design changed during the course of the semester from its original conception? What prompted these changes?What caused you to decide on this course of action?

Table 3. Example follow-up questions used to explore students’ use of design ethnography

What information did you gain from this interview? How did you use it? Was it diÄerent from information you had previously obtained?

How did you conduct the interviews? How did you prepare for the interview?

How important was the information that you obtained during the interviews? How did it influence your decision?

What was most diÅcult about incorporating stakeholder information into your design process?

two overarching categories: student-perceived ben-efits of and frustrations with design ethnography.Within the two overarching categories, we exploredsimilarities and diÄerences among the data in orderto identify themes, labeledeachthemewithadescrip-tion, re-read each data group related to the themes,and made changes where necessary. The procedurewas repeated until changes ceased to be made.

3. Findings

The results of the qualitative analysis are presentedbelow in two sections. First, the design ethnographymethods students used and the design scenarios inwhich they were applied are presented. Second,students’ perceptions about their use of designethnography are presented.

3.1 Student uses of design ethnography

Students used a variety of design ethnographytechniques in order to inform a host of diÄerentdesign processes during the capstone design course.Table 4 provides a summary of the design ethno-graphy techniques used by design teams and thescenarios in which they were used. Students identi-fied several design ethnography techniques thathelped them to make decisions including bothstructured and semi-structured interviews (withvarious stakeholders), informal conversations,observations, and surveys. Observations were usedalmost exclusively during the immersion experience(Teams A & B) for problem definition while inter-views were used throughout the entire design pro-cess. While all these methods were used at somepoint during the design process, teams relied moreheavily upon interviews (especially with experts)during the capstone design course. Identifying whythis preferencematerializedwas outside the scope ofthis study; however, preliminary results from thesemi-structured interviews with the student teamsindicated that availability, ease of communication,eÅciency of gaining information, and confidence

with the information gained from experts may haveplayed a significant role in this preference.Design ethnography played a significant role in

decision making during a variety of diÄerent designscenarios during the capstone course (Table 4). Itwas used extensively during the front-end designphases (i.e., problem definition, understanding pro-duct environment and usage, identifying userrequirements, and developing engineering specifica-tions). While the collection of data using designethnography decreased after the front-end designphases, students continued to use the data pre-viously collected and collect more data (to a lesserextent). Although there were numerous instances ofsuccessful uses of design ethnography, the focus ofthis study was on obstacles students encounteredwhen implementing these techniques to inform theirdesign decisions.

3.2 Student perceptions of using designethnography

While the results above provide preliminary find-ings as to the design ethnography methods studentschose to employ and the situations in which theywere employed, this study also sought to determinehow students perceived their use of design ethno-graphy. These student perceptions are displayed inTable 5 and the themes identified were placed intotwo overarching categories: student-perceived ben-efits and student-perceived frustrations with usingdesign ethnography. An in-depth discussion is pre-sented below.

3.2.1 Student-perceived benefits of designethnography

Themes representing student-perceived benefits ofdesign ethnography included gaining informationfrom stakeholders that led directly to design deci-sions and receiving explanations from stakeholderson technical issues. Students consistently cited sta-keholder interaction as the source of themost useful


Table 4. Design ethnography techniques used by students during the capstone course and the scenarios in which they were used

Design ethnography techniques used Scenarios in which design ethnography was used

Interviews (structured and semi-structured):– with experts– with stakeholders– with end-users– with proxy end-users

Informal communication/conversationsObservationsSurveys

Identifying/understanding/defining the problemUnderstanding the environment/product usageGaining background technical knowledgeIdentifying user requirementsDeveloping/refining engineering specificationsRanking user requirementsUnderstanding an unfamiliar fieldDeveloping testing/validation methodsConfirming information/decisionsUnderstanding ergonomicsGuiding design decisionsGuiding design principles (i.e. simpler is better)Evaluating concepts and approving final designsConducting usability testing/validation

information during design decisions as well as asource of clarification during diÅcult and techni-cally complicated portions of the design projects.The two primary themes in this category andexcerpts from team interviews are presented below.

Theme: Gaining information from stakeholders leddirectly to making design decisions.

Teams A, B, and C consistently voiced the opinionthat interactions with experts and stakeholdersproduced very useful information for designdecisions. Decisions aÄected by expert and stake-holder interaction included determining which userrequirements and engineering specifications shouldbe included, rank ordering these requirements,evaluating concepts, and developing validation pro-cedures. When design teams faced critical decisionpoints, they frequently found the answers duringtheir interviews with stakeholders.During a discussion on obtaining user require-

ments and engineering specifications, Team B wasasked which sources of information were the mostuseful and relevant when obtaining the require-ments and specifications:

‘‘People . . . Interviews. That’s where we got the best[information]’’ (Team B, 1st Interview).

Team A’s project involved assessing environmentalhazards; this is how they described their interactionwith an expert in this area:

‘‘[The expert] was extremely helpful to us. . .FromOSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administra-tion] . . . She taught us about the dragger tubes.We hadno idea dragger tubes even existed . . . And I think wefigured out that sometimes online research is kind ofhard for some knowledge, like the dragger tube. Wewould never know the dragger tube if we didn’t talk toanybody’’ (Team A, 2nd Interview).

Team A continued to emphasize the importance ofinteractingwith experts when seeking to understandkey engineering issues. Theymentioned experts whohelped them through diÅcult aspects of the designprocess:

‘‘I feel like it was a lot more helpful to actually talk topeoplewhoare specialists in the field . . . oncewe startedtalking to [the manufacturing engineers] . . . they wereable to answer a lot of questions we just couldn’t findonline’’ (Team A, 2nd Interview).

Team A considered their interaction with manufac-turing experts essential as they tried to develop asuccessful design.Team C spoke about the usefulness of both view-

ing an actual procedure in which their device wouldbe used and speaking to stakeholders having themost knowledge about the current devices in use:

‘‘We actually went into the open heart procedure and[the surgeons] . . . showed us how all of the equipmentworks together, so we got a better feel for what they areexpecting in terms of like the size and . . . theshape. . .how it could fit in [and] especially be held.’’(Team C, 1st Interview).

During interviews, all three teams commented thatthey gained valuable information from stakeholdersthat led directly to design decision.While students pointed to interaction with stake-

holders as a key source of decision-making informa-tion, the students did not speak to any exampleswhere they gained tacit knowledge from stake-holders. Instead students focused on using inter-views with stakeholders to solve problems outsidetheir domain of expertise.

Theme: Receiving explanations for complicated andtechnical information quickly and easily fromstakeholders.

The second theme in student-perceived benefits wasthat stakeholders articulated issues and technicaljargon in ways that were both tangible and useful.For example, during the early stages of their project,Team C discovered that the specifications providedby their company sponsor did not align with theinterviews they had conducted with doctors. Theydiscussed how a single interviewwas able to clear upthe confusion:

‘‘[The company] was very specific too and it took justone good interview with the [doctor] at the hospital [toobtain the correct specification]’’ (Team C, 1st Inter-view).

Team B described multiple times when experts orstakeholders helped steer the team in the correctdirection:

‘‘It was [the electrical engineering professor who said]‘maybe you want to cascade two [filters] in line’ . . . sothat planted the seed and I found aButterworth [filter]’’(Team B, 2nd Interview).


Table 5. Themes found after analysis of interview data

Overarching CategoriesStudent-perceived benefits ofusing design ethnography

Student-perceived frustrationswith using design ethnography

Themes Gaining information from stakeholders leddirectly to making design decisions

Receiving explanations for complicated andtechnical information quickly and easilyfrom stakeholders

Receiving inconsistent information fromstakeholders

Stakeholders could not specify userrequirement

Finding the ‘‘right’’ stakeholder to interview

The same team summed up this trend during theproject:

‘‘It’s a general theme of how we have done everythingwith this project. People point us in the right directionand we try to research it as much as we can’’ (Team B,2nd Interview).

Team A had no experience in the medical field,which led to the challenge of understanding whatwas happening in the operating room and how thestakeholders helped them to understand:

Student 1: ‘‘We also talked to other medical personnel,such as setup people and nurses.’’

Student 2: ‘‘They weren’t . . . interviews. More likequick talks. They helped explain to us what was goingon because one of the challenges was we’re all mechan-ical engineers,we’re in anoperating room, andwedon’tknow what they’re doing’’ (Team A, 1st Interview).

At various points in their design processes all threeteamsmade reference to the theme that experts wereable to explain highly technical information to themin a way that enabled them to easily incorporate theinformation into their design processes.When interviewing stakeholders on technical

topics, students appeared to be able to extractinformation easily from stakeholders and exploreideas thoroughly. We believe that this could be dueto the very specific topics around which theseinterviews were based. For example, when inter-viewing professors who were experts in signal pro-cessing, Team B was able to gain valuableinformation with respect to how they shouldapproach their problem. Students were using theinterviews to circumvent the task of reading andlearning about a field as broad as signal processing.

3.2.2 Student-perceived frustrations with designethnography

The students cited many frustrations related to theuse of design ethnography while collecting, synthe-sizing, and applying stakeholder information. Frus-trations were defined as issues and challenges thatthe students identified as barriers to using designethnography tomake design decisions. The analysiselucidated three themes discussed below.

Theme: Receiving inconsistent information fromstakeholders.

The three design teams reported receiving incon-sistent or incorrect information from stakeholders.Some stakeholders gave opposing viewpoints on aspecific subject, some experts contradicted the lit-erature, and some stakeholders provided conflictinginformation based upon how students elicited theinformation, e.g., via surveys versus interviews. Theteams had not anticipated the possibility of havingto reconcile inconsistent or incorrect information,

which led to diÅculties in their decision-makingprocesses.Team A described their interviews with physi-

cians to elicit the importance of cost for theirproposed design:

‘‘Yeah, sometimes they would give us a little bit ofmixed views, ormixedopinions. Sometimes the doctorswould say that cost is super important and at othertimes on surveys [cost] would end up being one of the[least important requirements] on the list when weasked them to rank them’’ (Team A, 1st Interview).

The conflicting information between interviews andsurveys was not expected by the design team and theteam was forced to reconcile the conflicting infor-mation without a particular strategy.Teams A and B ran into diÅculties when quanti-

fying information that was not uniform acrossstakeholder interviews. Team A described theirattempt to define the accuracy of their device inorder to establish validation criteria:

‘‘Because what does accuracy mean? DiÄerent peoplewill interpret it diÄerent ways.’’ (TeamA, 1st Interview)

Team B described a similar issue when developingan engineering specification after interviewing doc-tors who held diÄerent views:

‘‘. . . except that a lot of doctors can interpret variations[in the signal] diÄerently.’’ (Team B, 2nd Interview)

Teams A and B both found diÅculty in attemptingto quantify stakeholder information which was notuniform among various interviewees.The theme of receiving inconsistent or incorrect

information from stakeholders was evident duringthe study team’s interviews with all three designteams. This inconsistent or incorrect informationoften led the teams to become temporarily ‘‘stuck’’at a particular decision point. When consideringphysician opinions on topics, it is natural to expectdiÄering views on how to interpret physiologicalsignals; however, the students believed that thereshould be only one correct answer to their questionand were thus frustrated when presented with vary-ing responses. In general, the students teams lackedstrategies to synthesize data to inform specificdesign decisions.

Theme: Stakeholders could not specify userrequirements.

Students were also frustrated because they encoun-tered diÅculties while gathering user requirementsfrom stakeholders. This created downstream chal-lenges when they attempted to design a solutionbased upon these requirements.This theme is exemplified when Team A reported

what occurred when they asked physicians about anengineering specification for the user requirement


related to the maximum allowable size of theirdevice:

‘‘. . . they didn’t even know what our solution wouldlook like, [the doctor said], ‘well I guess if it is somehandheld device, maybe a 50% increase [in size over thecurrent solution]’ . . . they were just kind of guessing . . .they just ballparked . . . which might not have been agood thing for us to aim for, in hindsight’’ (TeamA, 2nd

Interview).

The high allowance for size specified by the physi-cians turned out to be erroneous, and Team A hadto adjust their design after prototyping had beenperformed.Often, stakeholders could not visualize the design

solution; Team A described the diÅculty ofattempting to gather user requirements from stake-holders without preconceived solutions:

‘‘Well [the doctors] kept telling us to do a specificsolution so . . . it was diÅcult to explain that we neededsolution-independent user requirements’’ (Team A, 1st

Interview).

During a discussion with Team A related to theirdevelopment of the user requirement of patientsafety, Team A was asked what the surgeons speci-fically meant by the term ‘‘patient safety’’:

‘‘I don’t think we specifically asked. [The doctors] justsaid [safety] was the first, the most important.’’ (TeamA, 1st Interview).

Because Team A did not follow up with the doctorson this issue, they understood only that ‘‘patientsafety’’ was an important user requirement, withoutunderstanding how it might be translated into engi-neering specifications. This led to frustration whenstudents attempted todevelop engineering specifica-tions based upon this vague user requirement.Team B described the diÅculty in explaining the

user requirements to physicians without influencingtheir answers:

‘‘The biggest problem I had is if you didn’t give themanexample of what a user requirement was they wouldn’tknow what to tell you, but if you did give them anexample of what a user requirement was, they wouldsay ‘oh, yeah. . .that’s what I want’’’ (Team B, 1st

Interview).

Another member of Team B discussed the diÅcultyin getting doctors to develop user requirementscreatively during interviews:

‘‘I found that if you put [options] in front of themwheninterviewing. . .it would stump the creativity of theinterview. . .they would do it more of like a task thancritically thinking.’’ (Team B, 1st Interview)

This themewas largely foundduring interviewswithTeams A and B, likely due to the fact that Teams Aand B developed user requirements in the fieldduring their international immersion experience.The international and clinical setting in whichstudents were working may have exacerbated the

diÅculties of developing user requirements throughstakeholder interaction.Within this theme students pointed to the diÅ-

culties they faced when attempting to gather userrequirements directly from stakeholders: studentssometimes elicited user requirements from stake-holders that they later discovered were not appro-priate for the design, stakeholders provided vagueuser requirements, and students struggled to extractuser requirements without biasing stakeholders viaexamples or question structure. Our analysis sug-gests that students’ lack of experience with inter-viewing techniques limited the quality of theethnographic data they obtained.

Theme: Finding the ‘‘right’’ stakeholder tointerview.

Within this theme, students spokeof being unable tointerview the correct stakeholder. Teamsmentionedseveral reasons as described below.Team B faced the issue of no longer being able to

find the experts needed to answer the questions theyhad about their project:

‘‘. . . so the problemwith [this physiological] signal nowis that there is no such thing as an expert in monitoring[it] . . . so we’re at a cross roads where all of the externalinput that we get, there is not much value in it’’ (TeamB, 2nd Interview).

Due to the specificity of their project, the teambelieved that they would not be able to find astakeholder who could answer their questionstowards the end of their project.Team A wanted to solicit a price point for their

medical device from surgeons, despite the fact thatthe surgeons were not formally involved in theprocurement process:

‘‘I don’t think the surgeons are the ones deciding to buyit, they’re just the ones who use it, and so they have apretty good understanding of what [the current pro-ducts] cost . . . but there is no saying that from ourinterviewswith them . . . [if] that’s 100% true’’ (TeamA,1st Interview).

Team C described a situation whereby the informa-tion given by US surgeons did not apply to themiddle-income country setting they were designingfor:

‘‘I think [theAmerican surgeons] are just kindof biasedtowards smaller devices . . . we understand . . . theirpoint of view . . . but we have been designing for cost,low cost for this [middle-income]market’’ (TeamC, 2nd

Interview).

Team C recognized the diÄerences between design-ing for a middle-income country and the US, butwas unable to pose their concerns to US surgeons ina way that would elicit information useful for amiddle-income country.Students reported that the stakeholder they


wanted to interview was not accessible or did notexist; however, the student teams were overlyfocused on finding a single stakeholder to answera specific question. Generally, the teams did notconsider interviewing multiple stakeholders withvarying expertise and synthesizing the informationto inform design decisions. For example, Team Bbelieved that an expert in the physiological signalparticular to their design project did not exist,however, the team did not consider interviewingphysicians (who would have knowledge of thesignal) and engineers (who would have knowledgeof signal processing) and combining thedata yieldedfrom both types of experts.

4. Discussion

4.1 Summary of findings

This study aimed to determine how students usedesign ethnography and perceive its usefulnesswhen making design decisions. Students employedseveral design ethnography techniques during var-ious design phases. Interviews with experts were themost common design ethnography technique stu-dents employed and were also used throughout allstages of the design process. Availability, ease ofcommunication, eÅciency of gaining information,and confidence with the information gained fromexperts played a significant role in students’ prefer-ences for choosing to use interviews.The thematic analysis of interview transcripts

with regards to student perceptions of design ethno-

graphy use resulted in two overarching categories ofthemes: student-perceived benefits and student-per-ceived frustrations when using design ethnography.The benefits and frustrations students perceived hadsignificant implications for their decision makingprocesses and this is summarized in Fig. 2.As shown in Fig. 2, when students perceived

design ethnography to be beneficial, their decision-making processes followed two distinct paths, eachof which produced what they perceived to be a fullyjustified decision. The first path involved consultingwith a stakeholder and then making a decisionbased directly on this interaction or after consultingliterature made relevant by the stakeholder. Thesecond path represents an initial review of theliterature and then consultation with a stakeholderto clarify the findings. While the students eÄectivelyused design ethnography data to justify their designdecisions, an analysis of the content of these deci-sions showed that students were not gaining thedeep, detailed information that design ethnographydata collection can yield.Also shown in Fig. 2 are three distinct decision-

making paths that students followed when theyperceived a frustration with design ethnography.These frustrations disrupted their decision-makingprocesses and led to what students perceived to bepartially justified decisions. The perceived frustra-tions with design ethnography seemed to stem fromstudent errors when planning or implementingethnographic methods or when utilizing the infor-mation collected. In the third path, students were


Fig. 2. Decision-making processes followed by student teams when implementing design ethnography.

frustrated when receiving inconsistent informationthat the study team believes stems from the chal-lenge students faced when synthesizing multipleperspectives from stakeholders and making aninformed decision. Conflicting viewpoints arecommon when interviewing stakeholders on mosttopics, but students expected each stakeholder toprovide similar opinions and this assumption led todiÅculties in decision making. The fourth pathrepresents students’ expectations that stakeholderswould be able to clearly specify user requirements.However, planning and executing eÄective inter-views is a skill learned through experience andtime. Students had the unrealistic expectation thatstakeholders would be able to list user requirementsduring interviews, which the students could thendirectly use in their design projects. However, therole of the designer is to translate ethnographic datainto user requirements and engineering specifica-tions, and students struggled to recognize this astheir role and how to approach this practice. Thefifth path represents students’ frustration when theyfelt they could not find the ‘‘right’’ stakeholder toanswer their questions. However, analysis of theinterviews and design reports led the study team torecognize that students were actually strugglingwith the task of synthesizing information collectedfrom multiple stakeholder interviews when makinga decision. In general, teams associated each deci-sion point with an accompanying single stakeholderwho could answer their questions in order to deter-mine what decision to make. This frustration maystem from the larger problem of students’ diÅcultywith solving open-ended problems that have noclearly defined solution or methodology.While our intention is not to make claims on the

impact of an immersion experience on students’ useof design ethnography, in our comparison amongteams, we noted some distinctions. Recall thatTeams A and B had performed eight weeks ofclinical observations and interviews prior to thecommencement of the capstone design course,whereas Team C learned about their projectduring the first week of the course. Analysis of theinterviewdata revealed that all three teamsprovidedapproximately equal numbers of examples relatedto the benefits of design ethnography. However,Teams A and B spoke significantly more about thefrustrations involved in using design ethnography.These two teams attempted to define user require-ments and engineering specifications during theireightweeks of clinical immersion and thus hadmoreopportunities to encounter frustrations than TeamC. Determining whether this diÄerence arose fromgreater exposure to design ethnography or from theinternational/clinical setting of the immersionexperience is outside the scope of this study. The

small sample of teams interviewed precludes ageneralization of the diÄerence between immersionand non-immersion teams; however, our follow-upwork will explore this in more depth.

4.2 Characterizing student implementation ofdesign ethnography

The findings discussed above are consistent with thelimited research on design ethnography educationpreviously cited. Our finding that students werefrustrated with extracting user requirements fromstakeholders is comparable to Sugar’s finding thatstudents performed onlyminor design changes afterengaging with users and conducting usability tests[21]. Students in our study and Sugar’s studyperformed only surface-level interactions with sta-keholders and did not extract the underlying ratio-nale for the stakeholders’ responses. Students didnot consistently recognize opportunities to performin-depth exploration of stakeholder knowledge.Similarly, all of our themes of student-perceivedfrustrations with design ethnography can be com-pared to the ‘‘tensions’’ found by Scott betweenstudents’ preconceived notions of the value ofstakeholder engagement and their practical eÄortsto implement it [22]. In our interviews, the studentsspoke frequently of the challenges and frustrationswith collecting, synthesizing, and using stakeholderinformation. This indicates that as their use ofdesign ethnography increased, students betterunderstood the complexities of stakeholder engage-ment and the non-trivial process of design ethno-graphy. Their continued use of design ethnographyin the face of these frustrations indicates that theyalso faced tension between the value they saw inusing design ethnography and the diÅculties asso-ciated with its use. In Zoltowski’s work studentsexperiencedmarkedly diÄerent ways of understand-ing human-centered design [23], and our findingsrevealed that students displayed multiple levels ofunderstanding with respect to how design ethno-graphy can be eÄectively incorporated into human-centered design as they progressed throughout theirdesign work. The frequent references to the benefitsof design ethnography suggest that our studentsunderstood why stakeholders are included duringdesign; however, the students’ surface-level percep-tions of the benefits of design ethnography suggestthat they did not fully understand these benefits andtheir frustrations point to their diÅculty to achievethose benefits.Based on the findings from this study, in conjunc-

tion with those of the previous studies mentionedabove, we propose a model, shown in Fig. 3, ofstudents’ desire to use design ethnography as theylearn and implement the techniques. The trajectoryshows that while students are learning the principles


of design ethnography in the classroom, their desireto implement the techniques increases. Then, as theybegin to practice design ethnography in the contextof a real design project, they recognize the diÅcultyand complexity involved, and their desire to incor-porate the techniques into their design processdecreases. The mix of benefits of and frustrationswith design ethnography during design causes theirdesire to perform ethnographic investigations torise and fall. The dotted line in Fig. 3 representsthe development of expertise wherein a studentbecomes proficient enough to readily incorporatedesign ethnography into the design process. A keygoal of our design ethnography curriculum shouldbe to provide students with the support necessaryduring the practical learning phase to speed themtowards the point at which the benefits outweigh thefrustrations of design ethnography.

4.3 Pedagogical implications

The findings from this study point to aspects ofdesign ethnography that present large obstacles tostudents, and thus where eÄort in developing peda-gogy should be placed. Conducting eÄectiveinterviews, recognizing opportunities to involvestakeholders, synthesizing large amounts or con-flicting information, and identifying the correctstakeholders to approach are all areas in whichstudents struggle.Specific instruction canbedevelopedbased on the

findings presented in this paper. For example, somestudents did not to recognize in timewhen theywereinteracting with stakeholders ineÄectively or only ata surface-level. Realization did not occur until theyattempted to use the information in the context oftheir design project, when the opportunity to per-form follow-up stakeholder interaction was limited

or no longer available. This delayed realization ofineÄective implementation did not allow for stu-dents to learn from their mistakes and try again.Thus, a real-time feedback mechanism and reflec-tion on interview quality could help students recog-nize mistakes early and improve their stakeholderinteractions. Additionally, it is important to con-sider how the structure and timing of the courseencourages and facilitates students’ use of designethnography techniques. Since perceived designvalues of the instructor and course format impactsstudent design choices [38-40], if design ethnogra-phy techniques are not emphasized or assessed,students may not recognize their importance andeither apply the techniques less rigorously or not atall. Developing pedagogy and course structures tocounter the other ways in which students werefrustrated with design ethnography shown in thispaper may provide the support necessary to movestudents from novice to more informed practi-tioners of ethnographic techniques.

4.4 Limitations and future work

This study focused on an in-depth exploration ofthree engineering student design teams learning andapplying design ethnography throughout theirdesign projects. While a study of three teams is notgeneralizable, qualitative research aims for transfer-ability, which means that the findings are richdescriptions of a specific context, and this richdescription can be used by other researchers tomake connections to their own situation [41, 42].The immersion experience that Teams A and Bparticipated in prior to the capstone design courseheavily focused on front-end design phases and theteamswere actively encouraged to use design ethno-graphy. Thismay have potentially biased interviews


Fig. 3.Model for student desire for using design ethnography.

by focusing on these phases of design. This studywas limited by a focus on design decisions ratherthan the design process as a whole. Thus, while thesemi-structured interview methodology allowed forthe discussion of a wide range of uses of designethnography, some experiences with design ethno-graphy not related to decision making may havebeen overlooked. In addition, team-based inter-views did not allowus to fully explore each student’sindividual perspectives on the use of design ethno-graphy. In addition, the focus on capstone designteams cannot be generalized to professional engi-neers practicing design ethnography.

5. Conclusions

Design ethnography is becomingmore prominent inproduct development. Case studies highlighting thebenefits of design ethnographywithin industry havebeen investigated, however, little work has beenperformed on understanding how students learnand apply the principles of design ethnography.This study expanded upon previous literature byinvestigating student perceptions of the use ofdesign ethnography when making design decisions.Semi-structured interviews, using a group interviewformat, were conducted with three senior capstonedesign teams on two occasions during the semester.Interview questions centered on the various designdecisions that students made over the course of theproject were identified by analyzing design teamreports. Analysis of the interview transcripts led tothe development of themes within two overarchingcategories: student-perceived benefits of design eth-nography and student-perceived frustrations withdesign ethnography. The benefits of design ethno-graphy reported by the students themselves suggestthat students can gain a certain comprehension levelof design ethnography via practical implementa-tion, but students will require further support tomove past the surface-level benefits of design ethno-graphy that were found in this study. Trial and errorallowed the teams to discover that ineÄective imple-mentation of this complex skill often producesunforeseen obstacles and frustrations. Themesrelated to the frustrations students perceived whenimplementing design ethnography were prominentwithin the data and representmultiple areaswhereindesign pedagogy can be developed to support learn-ing and implementation strategies.These results informed the development of a

proposed model for students’ desire to use designethnography, where the trajectory is characterizedby an initial phase of theoretical learning followedby a practical phase of implementation whereinstudents face unforeseen obstacles and realize thecomplexities involved. While the active learning

environment created by a design project allowedstudents to gain experience and knowledge in theuse of design ethnography, more focused pedagogyappears to be needed to move students along thecontinuum of novice to more informed designethnographers. Students were challenged by theopen-ended nature of design ethnography techni-ques and specific diÅculties related to implementingthese techniques. Developing pedagogy to helpstudents conduct more eÄective interviews, be ableto recognize opportunities to involve stakeholders,synthesize large amounts or conflicting informa-tion, and to identify the correct stakeholders fortheir design task would significantly improve stu-dents perceptions of design ethnography and theoutcomes of their design projects. Limitations of thecurrent study include the small sample of designteams studied (making it diÅcult to generalize theresults) and the focus on design decisions (whichmay have allowed uses of design ethnographyunrelated to design decisions not to have beencaptured during interviews). Further research isneeded to determine design ethnography pedagogythat best supports student learning.

Acknowledgments—This work was supported by the Universityof Michigan’s Rackham Merit Fellows program, the NationalScience Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship program,the National Science Foundation’s CAREER program (RAPD-0846471, funded under the American Recovery and Reinvest-ment Act of 2009), and the NCIIA’s Course and Program grant(Development of an Undergraduate Minor Specialization inSustainable Global Health Design). The study team thanksMayla Harp for her help during the data collection process,Ann Stewart for her help in technical writing, and the seniordesign students who participated in this study.

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Ibrahim Mohedas is currently a Ph.D. candidate in mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan. His researchfocuses on the design of medical devices for resource limited settings, particularly related to the use of design ethnographyin developing these technologies. He received his B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in2011.

Shanna R. Daly is an assistant research scientist in engineering education at the University of Michigan. She has a B.E. inchemical engineering from the University of Dayton and a Ph.D. in engineering education from Purdue University. Herresearch focuses on idea generation, design strategies, design ethnography, creativity instruction, and engineeringpractitioners who return to graduate school. She teaches design and entrepreneurship courses at the undergraduate andgraduate levels.

Kathleen H. Sienko received her B.S. degree (’98) in materials engineering from the University of Kentucky, Lexington,KY, USA, S.M. degree (’00) in aeronautics and astronautics fromMIT, Cambridge,MA, USA, and Ph.D. degree (’07) inmedical engineering andbioastronautics from theHarvard-MITDivisionofHealth Sciences andTechnology,Cambridge,MA, USA. She is a Miller Faculty Scholar and an associate professor in the departments of mechanical and biomedicalengineering at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) and director of the Sensory Augmentation and RehabilitationLaboratory and the Laboratory for Innovation in Global Health Technology.


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