[Sigia-l] Ethnographic research?

Tue Feb 10 08:13:40 EST 2004

I think interviewing is fundamental.

We had a set of post-observation questions we asked to the people we had
just observed.  It provided us with some invaluable quantitative
information.

We even include some informal usability tasks, things like: if you wanted to
find so-and-so, where would you go in the interface?

Mostly, we found that our users (call-center operators) had no idea how to
navigate the intranet: they simply memorized the paths they used the most
and, when they had problems, they instantly called their supervisor.

We found out about this partly from observartion but also partly from asking
them to find things that were not common in their routine and watching how
stumped they'd get.

Alex
Alexandre Castro e Silva
alexandre at usability.com.br
Consultor | Usability
(55 21) 2447 5716
(55 21) 9809 4179

Usability: http://www.usability.com.br
Guia de Usabilidade: http://www.sobresites.com/usabilidade
Blog de Usabilidade & Arquitetura da Informação:
http://blogdeusabilidade.blogspot.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Arthur Fink" <arthur at arthurfink.com>
To: "Stew Dean" <stew at stewdean.com>; "SIGIA-L" <sigia-l at asis.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2004 7:03 AM
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Ethnographic research?

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

    Arthur Fink Consulting  ·  arthur at ArthurFink.com
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