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Ethnography has become a familiar form of research, but is often poorly described in the research literature and its analysis is widely misunderstood. Methods from the social sciences are often presented as nothing more than ‘chatting to people’, 'hanging around' and loosely describing what was seen, or conversely, as a kind of impenetrably over-theoreticised and pseudo-philosophical description of our social reality. This is a real problem for communicating the value of such research in HCI research. Much lip service is given to ethnography although the findings are often only loosely discussed or superficially applied, arguably, as a result of this. This lecture attempts to show what ethnographic research actually involves.
Bronislaw Malinowski
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Ethnography – ‘fit’ with usability engineering
How do people work together?
How are they organised?
What are their normal working practices?
What happens when things go wrong?
Can they tell you what they do? Do they know what they do?
BUT
It cannot answer questions about how to DO requirements capture (ie. how to develop a perfect specification for a system), or provide a comprehensive systems evaluation
It is about documenting and understanding peoples’ activities
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on requirements ‘engineering’…
“The hardest single part of building a software system is deciding precisely what to build. No other part of the conceptual work is as difficult as establishing the detailed technical requirements, including all the interfaces to people, to machines, and to other software systems. No other part of the work so cripples the resulting system if done wrong. No other part is more difficult to rectify later”
(F. Brooks, "No Silver Bullet", IEEE Computer, 1987)
Social and ethnographic research techniques form just a part of this, but are clearly important in supporting requirements engineering and specification
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2 serious methodological problems for social scientists (and HCI researchers)
we can’t get inside people’s heads to examine why they act the way that they do
…. and …
social activities are a combination of multiple actors, as well as a physical settings - all of which can be considered as a unit of analysis
think of a conversation: not just two people, but an interactive phenomena
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History - anthropological research
anthropology‘making the familiar exotic and the exotic familiar’ (Kirsten Hastrup)
social life consists of action, or interaction, out of which we build this thing called ‘society’: we call these people actors or agents
‘the people who live in any society may be unaware, or only dimply aware, that it has a structure. It is the task of the social anthropologist to reveal it’ (E.E. Evans-Pritchard)
some key issues:norms (‘rules’ e.g. gift giving and reciprocity) and social control
(‘sanction’)
socialisation (membership)
relationships and kinship
social structures and social organisation
language and action
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methods in anthropology (and sociology):the field study addressing the problem of ‘ecological validity’
understanding peoples’ activities outside the laboratory
interviews
formal, unstructured, ethnographic, contextual
observational studies/ethnography
long term; understanding action in context; reflexivity; interpretive; danger of ‘going native’
diary studies
written, photographic, video, telephone
video analysis
capture material for later detailed analysis
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Definition
The study of people
in cultures; also the
text that is written
based on that study
( Sunstein and Chiseri-Strater, 2007)
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Culture
An invisible web of behaviours, patterns, rules, and rituals of a group of people who have contact with one another and share common languages
(Sunstein and Chiseri-Strater, 2007: 3)
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Sub-cultures
Computer interest groups
Online discussion groups
Listservs
Library user groups
Football teams
Dogwalkers
UG Students!
Group characteristics
Rituals
Insider phrases
Behaviours
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the ethnographic approach (from Greek: ‘people writing’)
relies primarily on observational and first-person data collection
the researcher accounts for how and why people act as they do
we use ‘ethnographic’ to describe:
‘a particular form of 'investigative fieldwork' that seeks to describe, qualitatively, the means by which people organise and present themselves in their everyday lives’ (Taylor and Harper 2003, p.269)
often described as ‘ethnographically-oriented or ethnographically-informed’
BUT BEWARE!
not all observational work, interviews, diary studies, etc. are ethnographic
…and…ethnography is frequently misapplied to mean ethnomethodological
ethnography
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ethnography
data collection from the ‘real’ world
history: anthropology and sociology (100+ yrs old)
‘immersion’ in the situation
aim to understand people from their own point of view
range of methods - observation, in-depth and ethnographic interviews, participation, ‘hanging about’, watching and learning about the people
holistic method: examines everything of relevance - belief systems, rituals, objects used, texts...
Intention is (usually) to produce a ‘Thick description’ (Geertz, 1973)
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what’s been said about it?
‘...a style of research in which the observer adopts the stance of an anthropologist coming upon the phenomenon for the first time. One takes the perspective of a stranger as a way of highlighting the taken-for-granted practices of the natives under study.’ (Woolgar, 1988)
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what’s been said about it (2)?
used to ‘uncover and explicate the ways in which people in particular work settings come to understand, account for, take action and otherwise manage their day-to-day situation’ (Van Maanen, 1979, p. 540).
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what’s it do/ what’s it for?
-> allows the analyst to reveal complexity, rather than stripping it away
(unlike experimental/lab. work, which control variables)
-> its intention is to show how work is organised
(unlike surveys, which show that it is organised)
Aim is NOT to see things from the perspective of one person, or their subjective opinions of the work…
…but to understand the situation from its own cultural framework
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Margaret Mead
Coming of age in Samoa (1928)
"I have tried to answer the question which sent me to Samoa: Are the disturbances which vex our adolescents due to the nature of adolescence itself or to the civilization? Under different conditions does adolescence present a different picture?"
On a village of 600 people on the island of Ta‘u. She got to know, live with, observe, and interview through an interpreter 68 young women between the ages of 9 and 20, concluding that the passage from childhood to adulthood - adolescence - in Samoa was a smooth transition and not marked by the emotional or psychological distress, anxiety, or confusion seen in the United States”
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William Whyte
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Lucy Suchman
“human action is constantly constructed and reconstructed from dynamic interactions with the material and social worlds… situated cognition emphasizes the importance of the environment as an integral part of the cognitive process”
Used this at Xerox (PARC) in supporting design of new interactive technologies (and photocopiers!)
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Garfinkels’ ‘Bastards’
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Parody: Uncovering the Secrets of “Dark, Mysterious” Austria
“At 5:40, we learn that the team has disproved the theory that Europeans are monogamous; starting at about 7:50, they describe the elaborate costumes and militaristic symbolism of clans of the Tyrol region of Austria; and at 15:00, there’s a great discussion of the curious obsession with “patently useless activities,” such as biking for no other purpose than biking itself.
Aside from the humorous commentary, it’s a great way of illustrating the sociological imagination, which requires us to step out of our own culture and try to look at it through the eyes of an outsider — and, as C. Wright Mills put it, to recapture the ability to be astonished by what we normally take for granted.”
http://badethnography.tumblr.com/post/9969171340/uncovering-the-secrets-of-dark-mysterious
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Naturally Occurring Data
Allows investigation of phenomena in their natural setting
Provide data which is an ‘enactment’ of social behaviour in its own social setting
Of value where behaviours and interactions need to be understood in ‘real’ world contexts
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Contextual interviews: a ‘how to’ guide
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ATC – is paper safer? (mackay)
• How are annotations used?
• How do they make each other aware of their activities and potential problems?
• How do they deal with systems failure?
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Another example from construction site
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Note the presence of the observer (ie. you)
Don’t ignore yourself!
You may affect the setting
You bring your own conceptual understandings of the setting
You may bring your own moral judgement/s to the setting
Practice ‘reflexivity’
This is the recognition that you are orienting to your own understandings, knowledge, moral structure, and other views;
and
That you are a part of the setting, and may influence what happens;
Both of these this need to be recorded and acknowledged
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ethnographic analysis and reporting
collating the written reports of the activities observed, communication activities that took place, in-situ interviews, photos, videos and other resources collected
researchers usually code/categorise, catalogue and synthesise findings
may be an informal or formal process
some software exists for this (generally poor, avoid!)
keeping in mind issues
theoretical (essential question being ‘truth claims’)
practical (how to report it to inform design)
not just to describe, but to explain
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be aware!
so called ‘Hawthorne’ effect
improve or modify (an aspect of) behaviour being studied in response to the fact that they are being studied
history: changes to factory illumination improved productivity (1920-30)
people don’t like being ‘monitored’
“the spy”
‘time and motion’ clipboard model of research
worries, especially in a recession!
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Summary
Answers problem: How do you know what is important to design for?
Aims to provide an in-depth and interpreted understanding of the social world
Data collection methods usually involve close interaction researcher/research participants
Data is detailed, information rich and extensive
Not a form of ‘proof’, in the sense of experimental analysis; harder to show, for e.g. improved usability or cost savings
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reading
Crang, M. and Cook, I.: Doing fieldwork. Sage, London, 2007
Spradley, J. P.: Participant observation. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1980.
Wolcott, H. F.: The art of fieldwork. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, 1995.
Wolcott, H. F.: Ethnography: a way of seeing. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, 1999.
Bishop, W. (2011) Ethnographic Writing Research: Writing it Down, Writing it Up, and Reading it, Heinemann
Bryant, J. (2009) What are students doing in our library? Ethnography as a method of exploring library user behaviour, Library and Information Research, 33(102): 3-9
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Davies, B. (2003) Reflexive Ethnography: A Guide to Researching Selves and Others, Routledge, London
Fetterman, D. (1998) Ethnography: Step by Step, Sage, London
Geertz, C. (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures , Basic Books, New York
Hammersley, M. and Atkinson, P. (1995) Ethnography: Principles in Practice, Routledge, London
Miles, M., Huberman, A. (1994) Qualitative Data Analysis, Sage, London.
Sunstein, B. and Chiseri-Strater, E. (2007) FieldWorking: Reading and Writing Research, Bedford/St Martin’s, Boston
Whyte, W. F. (1943) Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum, Chicago University Press, Chicago
