[Sigia-l] Ethnographic research?

[Arthur Fink]

At 03:33 AM 2/10/2004, Stew Dean wrote:

>The in lab vs in their environment is one that's quite old but subjective 
>in my view.   I have used both in the past. The Lab environment has the 
>advantage it's easy to set up, it takes less time and via the use of a one 
>way mirror can get team members and clients into to see the users talk 
>through aspects of the current problem.
>
>On the other hand if you have total buy in and have a good time budget 
>then you can learn much from one to one interviews in the users 
>environment. From a psychology point of view people are more likely to 
>remember vital things if they are going through a task in the environment 
>they are used to doing it - you can also see the user do things they just 
>take for granted but can, in it's self, be very important.

In the true "contextual inquiry" mode, though, we're not exactly 
interviewing.  Mostly we're watching people work in their own "space" ... 
sometimes asking for annotation or explanation.  After a while, the user 
tends to take over, explaining why they are doing or not doing 
something.   While it's useful just to see somebody doing their key tasks 
in a straightforward way, it's crucial to also see the pattern of 
interruptions, collaborative work solving difficult problems, getting 
"curve ball" data, etc. that happens during their peak load office time.

For me it was a luxury last month to be paid for almost at whole week of 
just observing in this manner.  (I didn't realize that a week in Wisconsin 
in winter was also a great way to beat the New England freeze!)  It was, 
indeed, a hard sell, to convince the client that this would be a sensible 
(really a vital) investment in their product.  But we took away so much 
more than the dry academic picture that just interviews and isolated 
observation would have given us.

Artbur Fink

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