1. FIELDWORK David Sirkin · 23 April 2009 STANFORD HCI GROUP / CS376

2. EXERCISE

3. Observe and Question
what, where, why, when, how

4. Rules-of-Thumb an ethnographic approach to design (pg 971)
establish rapport and casual conversation
assume that the respondent is the expert
avoid yes/no questions and interrupting
adapt the line of questioning if necessary

5. Tell A Story
role play your way through a routine task

6. Communicate Insights an ethnographic approach to design (pg 974)
experience models and opportunity maps
a visible and dynamically present profile
scenarios to identify pain or opportunities
mock-up or prototype design possibilities

7. DEBRIEF
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8. Reflection what kinds of questions did you ask?
which ones worked well or not very well
how did it feel to be questioned?
revealing your belongings is personal
did you learn about your partner?
view into lifestyle outside of wallet use

9. Takeaways
sometimes what you know is sufficient to design for many other users
but it can be more efficient to look to your users for insights beforehand
particularly effective organization systems
patterns that repeat across groups of users
behaviors that users are not even aware of

10. READINGS

11. Reading 1 Thick description geertz (1973)
class rating 3.38 (range 1..5)
the sentences were extremely long; felt like reading Shakespeare; the anecdotes made me confused; not sure how it relates to hci; i like geertz’s description of culture; interpretive anthropology is introduced as a new paradigm; emphasis on ethnography as art rather than science…

12. Culture
the…debate within anthropology as to whether culture is “subjective” or “objective”…is wholly misconceived. once human behavior is seen as…symbolic action…the question as to whether culture is patterned conduct or a frame of mind, or even the two somehow mixed together, loses sense. (pg 9)
culture is public because meaning is. (pg 11)

13. 3, No 4, Characteristics
there are three characteristics of ethnographic description: it is interpretive; what it is interpretive of is the flow of social discourse; and the interpreting involved consists in trying to rescue the “said” of such discourse from its perishing occasions and fix it in perusable terms. (pg 19)
the important thing about the anthropoligist’s findings is their complex specificness, their circumstantiality. (pg 22)

14. Reading 2
an ethnographic approach to design blomberg, burrell and guest (2003)
class rating 4.34 (range 3..5)
best paper yet; right balance between theory and practice; step missing between between collecting information and coming up with meaningful insights; ethnography seems to provide little verification of causes–why users behave as they do; being observed automatically makes people behave differently…