Understanding HCI

Ethnography

What is Ethnography?

Ethnography (sometimes called Field Observation) is an ethnographic technique where the evaluator visits the normal workplace of the users. The evaluator should be as unobtrusive as possible so as to allow the user to work normally. It is common to use a digital camera to take shots of screens, artefacts, scenarios etc. and a notepad to record pertinent details. Video recording may not be possible in this environment as it may be intrusive – particularly in a confidential situation (hospitals / banks etc).

Hughes, King, Rodden and Anderson (1994) have identified 3 flavours of ethnography:

  1. Concurrent Ethnography
  2. Quick and Dirty or lightweight Ethnography
  3. Evaluative Ethnography

Concurrent Ethnography

  1. Concurrent Ethnography is used to familiarise the design team with the existing practises of users so as to develop a framework and design criteria for product design.
  2. This type of ethnography is carried out previous to the development of the system design itself.
  3. Primarily research based, it may be carried out formally or informally.
  4. Field workers spend time in real-life situations observing, videotaping and interviewing.
  5. Attention is paid to the routine what is usually reserved for the unusual in an effort to understand it in its own right – how tasks are actually done, as opposed to the way they are thought to be done.
  6. Rapid Prototyping of the product may follow with several iterations until the design meets the users’ requirements.

Lightweight Ethnography

  1. Lightweight Ethnography does the same thing but attempts to get as much information as quickly as possible.
  2. The focus is on understanding the main concepts of the situation and it lacks the attention to detail of Concurrent Ethnography.
  3. Time frames are usually short, but the pay-off in terms of data gathered to effort can be quite large.
  4. It is usually successful in giving the designers a sense of the setting though it can be difficult to translate findings into design, as the terminology of field workers and designers may be different.

Evaluative Ethnography

  1. Evaluative Ethnography differs in that it is used to evaluate the completed system.
  2. These results can then be compared against the original analysis.

Why Use it?

  1. The purpose of ethnography is give designers and evaluators an understanding of the context in which a technology is used.
  2. It has been developed as a result of the growing realisation that computer systems exist within a network of human relationships.
  3. Only by understanding this network, and the flow of information and communication within it, is it possible to design systems which actively support it.
  4. Ethnography has the ability to deal with the social and collaborative context of the system.
  5. It is important to see the original or prototype system in action as it may yield insights into how the users make the system their own.
  6. This interaction may differ dramatically from what the designers had in mind, so it is important to catalogue this.
  7. In addition there may be external factors (such as group processes & relationships) that may be overlooked in the design and not found during artificial testing scenarios but which are critical to the effective use of the system - many systems fail due to the fact that their design pays insufficient attention to the social context of work
  8. Ethnography seeks to answer what might be regarded as an essential CSCW (computer supported cooperative work) question: what to automate and what to leave to human skill and experience.

Participants Needed

Experts

One usability expert is required for the exercise.

users

A minimum of 2 users should be observed - the more users that can be observed, the better the results; however due to time restrictions it may be necessary to observe a subset of the entire team. Where possible try to select team members with different job descriptions and daily tasks.

Task List

  1. Choose a variety of representative users of the product, from different workplaces, industries, and backgrounds, and arrange field visits with these users.
  2. Prepare the list of questions need to be answered and data need to be collected. Some likely ones are:
    • Who is present?
    • What is their role?
    • What is happening?
    • When does the activity occur?
    • Where is it happening?
    • Why is it happening?
    • How is the activity organized?
  3. Use the time at the field site effectively. Try to collect as much data as possible there. Data analysis can be done after getting back to the office.
  4. Part of field observation is inquiry; that is, interviewing users about their jobs and the ways they use your product (more on this later).
  5. Part is observation; watching people use your product in the way they normally would in the course of day-to-day life.
  6. One way to ensure adequate data collection is to identify as many artifacts and outcroppings as possible:
    1. Artifacts are physical objects in use at a site (notebooks, forms, reports, Post-It notes)
    2. Outcroppings are noticable physical traits that mark or characterize the site (size of cubicles, size of whiteboards and what's written on them, uniforms written by certain castes of personnel).
    3. Take photos, get files on disk, ask for maps or layouts of physical objects
    4. You can do remote observation by sending a disposable camera out to a site, and have the people there take pictures of their environment. Once you get the pictures, discuss them over the phone with the people at the remote site.
  7. Group relationships can help identify process and information flows. They include
    1. organization
    2. hierarchy
    3. informal and formal links/interactions among groups
    4. reporting relationships, etc.
  8. Communication patterns show who talks to whom, and how often. For communication-intensive products, such as telephony, email, or advertising, this information is vital.
  9. When asking people how they do things, or how they're supposed to do things, ask them, "Does that work?" "Do others do things differently?" "Why?"

Afterwards,

  1. Identify unmet needs, inefficiencies and use of artefacts
  2. It may be useful to host a focus Group session

Conditions required

  1. The environment should be the normal working environment.
  2. Ethnography studies a real life scenario as it unfolds.
  3. Permission of the management and users may be required for any or all of this task.

Will need one of the following:

  1. Notes & still camera
  2. Audio & still camera
  3. Video

Limitations Of method

  1. Ethnography is only successful when accepted by the people in the setting. Reluctance on the part of the subjects results in modified behaviour and hence invalid results.
  2. Even though the evaluator tries to remain as unobtrusive as possible their presence may still affect the performance of the observed workers.
  3. Whether their presence affected the workers will also be impossible for the evaluator to measure.
  4. It may be difficult to get accurate results if video recording is not available.
  5. Ethnographers have little control and are at the mercy of ‘real-life’ events
  6. The study can be difficult to pin down to a time frame
  7. Analyzing video and data logs can be time-consuming.
  8. Data is not quantitative.

Exercise - ethnography in Practise

One student will play the part of a worker in the process of scanning a document and emailing it to me. The remaining students will watch, take notes, take photos and collect artefacts to help in the analysis of the workplace. This exerise is not strictly concerned with interface design, but the process of analysing the situation is what we are interested in here. In small groups of 2 or 3 write up your findings. The worker student should also write up any difficulties or points of interest they found. To finish, groups' findings will be compared with each other and with those of the 'worker' student. Focus should be on:

  1. The specifics of what is happening: Who, What, When, Where, Why, How?
  2. Identify unmet needs of the process
  3. Identify inefficiencies in the process
  4. Identify use and purpose of artefacts
  5. Identify solutions to any unmet needs or inefficiencies
  6. Identify which type of ethnography this exercise is

Reading