Abstract
This chapter may be read as both an introduction to and summary of our account of design ethnography. By turns we outline the ‘turn to the social’, which occasioned ethnography’s initial involvement and its ongoing use in design, and the foundational nature of ‘studies of work’ that ethnography provides. We outline basic concepts that underpin ethnographic studies of work and practical tips for applying those concepts and ‘finding the animal in the foliage’ or the real world, real time organisation of human activities. We also consider a range of practices that have evolved over the last 20 years for incorporating ethnography into the design process, and a number of myths that have emerged along the way. In a nutshell, our purpose here is to outline what is involved in doing ethnography for systems design so that you might develop your awareness and learn important aspects of doing the job yourself.
The prime objective is not so much ethnography as such, but ethnography as a means of uncovering the real world character of work for systems design.
John Hughes
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Notes
- 1.
It may seem strange to speak of ‘searching the internet’ in terms of the coordination of ordinary activities. We are not, however, simply interacting with machines when we ‘search the internet’. We are interacting with other people, albeit indirectly. Furthermore, the production, distribution and use of digital media may be done by a host of anonymous members working alone but it is social through and through. Practical sociological methods of search term formulation stitch members’ anonymous actions together. They enable you to find something that someone else has made and to subsequently make use of it yourself. So you need to understand more than the technical infrastructure and computing methods at work to understand how ‘searching the internet’ is organised and accomplished in the real world.
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Crabtree, A., Rouncefield, M., Tolmie, P. (2012). Design Ethnography in a Nutshell. In: Doing Design Ethnography. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-2726-0_10
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