Ethnography is a research method based on observing people in their natural environment instead of in a formal research setting.

It has become a core methodology for market research and usability design because it helps us to:
understand norms identify barriers understand how people process information understand patterns of behaviour and communication understand diversity

Macro-ethnography

Studies general groups such as the English, or Geeks.

Micro-ethnography

Studies a specific group such as members of Congress or industrial glass design engineers.
Is usually the main focus of ethnographic research. It looks inward, and explores how the members of a group see themselves Explores how non-members / group outsiders see the group. Situational reduction

Emic perspective

Etic perspective

Symbols

Examines the material artefacts of a culture, such as art, clothing, tools, or technologies

Popular in field of human computer interaction which includes *gathering user requirement *understanding and developing user models *new product evaluation and iterative design Used in design of variety of products including *workstation for diagnostic radiology *Network application software *Photocopy products *Consumer software

Field work done in natural settings

Bias towards understanding activities from Informants perspective

Study of large picture to provide complete context of activity

Rich description of people And environment

Provide rich understanding of work settings and context of use for the artifacts that they design Provide ways to elicit user requirement Helps designers understand the varied and complex interrelationship between individual users within and between work groups

Misconception-----field data collection In actual -----analytic reportage

(ethnographer acts as a translator or cultural broker between the group under study and reader)

Challenge faced
DEMAND TO SPEND TIME IN THE FIELD WHILE MATCHING THE PACE OF EVER QUICKENING PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT CYCLES

Quick and dirty ethnography

(short focussed study and refer to previous studies)

Several time saving techniques

Condensed ethnographic interview
(remove open ended questions and observations)

Use unattended video observation Interactive feature conceptualization

(quickly identify and categories user needs)

 Rapid

assessment procedure

Participation of team of researchers

Interaction among members of team Emphasis on rapid production of results Other characteristics like
System level perspective Triangulation of data collection (multiple data sources) Iterative data collection and analysis

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Narrow the focus of field research before entering the field. zoom in on important activities Use multiple interactive observation techniques to increase the likelihood of discovering exceptional and useful user behavior Use collaborative and computerized iterative data analyze methods

Enable people higher rate of doing Allow researcher to do more with a smaller unit of field time. Examples
Increasing the speed of the activity Substituting a faster activity for a slower one Multitasking Managing the use of time

Traditional

lens

ethnographic research considered as wide angle research

Benefits Important details observed after lots of observation Valuable foundation for future research Field data can be augmented with field visits and Longitudinal questions can be invested Problems Lot of time and energy is invested in observing and capturing data Opportunity cost (data not useful for research) Vast quantity of data makes finding difficult Nuggets of gold in data, difficult to mine

If research question is time bounded then shelf life of the data may be fairly short

MAJOR GOALS

OBSERVE AND UNDERSTAND PATTERNS

PRACTICAL USE OF THAT UNDERSTANDING

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Identify one or more informants to serve as a research field guide Include corporate informants
Use fairly traditional fringe sampling techniques To develop long term informant relationship

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Inclusion of broad holistic conversation with respondents Approches to collect field data collection
More than 1 researcher in the field at a time
Advantages
Multiple researcher can in field can split up and observe different groups Multiple view of same events can be turned into richer presentation

Interactive feature conceptualization Structured interview Activity walk through Contextual enquiry Group elicitation techniques Personal observation

2 general approaches that can help the applied ethnographer are

Computer assisted analysis
Exploration of large amount of qualitative data by coding,searching and subsetting the data Analysis tool for text based data eg asksam etc Images ,video and audio related data is filtered, summarized and visualized Include cognitive mapping Pictorial story telling Scenerio analysis

Collaborative data analysis

Project code named thinking spears Study how internet is changing the way of people work and ways in which they conduct research Ethnographic research used to understand nature of change Research plan includes 31 organisation Time period 3 months Survey team interviewed principal manger and workers

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Focusing the observation and key informnats Interactive observation Understanding data field

Thus there should be rapid shift from the purely descriptive representation of observation to preliminary analysis with more analytical view of ethnography

Thank you