Work, Ethnography and System Design Bob Anderson

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Work, Ethnography and System DesignBob Anderson

• Ryan Yasui
• ICS 280
• March 11, 2004

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Overview

• Introduction
• History of Ethnography
• Central Ideas
• Ethnography in Practice
• Remaining Issues

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Introduction

• Definition
• Ethnography is a particular analytic strategy for
  assembling and interpreting the results of
  fieldwork gathered very often by participant
  observation
• Authors Aim
• Describe ethnography
• Raise a few questions against which to determine
  if ethnography might actually be what design
  needs and is able to use
• Decide if ethnography is what system design
  should use.

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A Bit of History

• Invented by Bronislaw Malinoski in 1915
• Spent three years on the Trobriand Islands
• Invented the modern form of fieldwork and
  ethnography as its analytic component
• Collected three types of data
• Synoptic Charts
• Detailed description of day to day life and
  activities
• All stories, narratives, myths, magical formulae

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Motivation Behind Ethnography

• Things arent always what they seem
• Appearances do not tell the whole story
• The native is not necessarily the best judge of
  what they are doing
• Must combine this with other analysis
• There is a need to look behind appearances in a
  detailed way

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Central Ideas

• Ethnography is a representation of what has been
  seen, heard, and found in the field
• Not just writing up field notes
• Kula Ring example
• Ethnographers know in ways that others cant
• Ethnography is also about us
• Ordinariness of our everyday life

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Central Ideas

• Communities of Practice
• Viewed work groups as communities of practice
• Learning a culture is learning these practices
• Situatedness of Action
• Phenomena of sociological inquiry is the outcome
  of structures of activities
• Determine whats going on by local, occasioned,
  and situated actions
• Example is Conversation Analysis

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Summary of Central Ideas

• Dependent upon fieldwork as its investigative
  technique. Ethnography is the analytic component
  of this investigation
• Concerned with representing communities of
  practice and actual work practice by examining
  the minutiae of working lives
• Sees the structure and order of working lives as
  situated, occasioned, and co-produced

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Ethnography In Practice

• Integration
• Ethnographer is a member of the design team
• Used in conceptual stage, the design requirements
  analysis stage, and the evaluation of design
  stage
• Objectives of the study are set by the design team

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Ethnography In Practice

• Complementary
• Objectives are set by what the ethnographer
  perceives them to be
• May not be what the designers want
• Aim is to raise awareness of the setting in which
  the technology will be deployed

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Ethnography In Practice

• Independence
• Ethnographer doesnt want to impact design
• Findings are relevant to debates within the
  social sciences

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Remaining Issues

• Methodology?
• Relationship to theory?
• Scope of the findings?
• Politics of intervention?

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Methodology or Gift?

• Portrayed as a methodology
• Does it have a body of techniques and procedures
  that anyone can apply?
• It is more interpretive than empirical
• Is the ethnographers skill a gift?
• Need to look at the broader method
• A way of finding out
• The fieldwork experience is most important
• How do we relate these findings to design?

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Relationship to Theory

• Disagreement with current Engineering style
  theory
• Divide and Conquer
• Ethnography needs to decide on its
  epistemological grounding and how it relates to
  other accepted approaches before it can be
  integrated into these approaches

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Scope Of The Findings

• Common reservation is its idiosyncratic character
• Findings are from a particular point of view
• But generalizations are needed for design
• Based on summarization and abstraction
• Ethnography can provide this with some trade-offs
• The users point of view

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Politics Of Intervention

• Designers dont feel that they are responsible
  for social/organization effects of their
  technology
• Ethnographers disagree
• All design is in/for someones interests
• Whose are dominant?
• How do you decide on politics for design?

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Questions?

• What can ethnography contribute to design?
• Feasibility of this approach?
• How far can this be taken to develop a practical,
  design-oriented social science?
• Above just consciousness raising
• Examples of ethnographic analyses in Software?