Abstract
Ethnographic approaches associated with social and cultural anthropology are common currency in systems design. They are employed widely in academic and industrial reasearch labs, consultancy firms, IT companies and design houses. Doing Design Ethnography is about one particularly influential approach: ethnomethodologically informed or inspired ethnography. This chapter provides a brief overview of the ethnomethodological orientation and the ‘job of work’ using it entails. It outlines the purpose of this book, the authors' experience in doing ethnography for design, and core texts that the reader might also turn to further develop their understanding of the ethnomethodological approach.
There is not so much required, any strength of Imagination, or exactness of Method; or depth of Contemplation as a sincere Hand, and a faithful Eye, to examine, and to record, the things themselves as they appear
Robert Hooke
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Both of the books cited above will make good companions to the current text. We also recommend a small number of core readings that elaborate the foundations of our ethnographic approach for anyone who might like to delve a little deeper. They include the following:
Further Reading
Both of the books cited above will make good companions to the current text. We also recommend a small number of core readings that elaborate the foundations of our ethnographic approach for anyone who might like to delve a little deeper. They include the following:
Button, G. (Ed.). (1991). Ethnomethodology and the human sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Button, G. (2000). The ethnographic tradition and design. Design Studies, 21, 319–332.
Button, G., & Harper, R. (1996). The relevance of ‘work-practice’ for design. Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of Collaborative Computing, 4(4), 263–280.
Button, G., & Sharrock, W. (1997). The production of order and the order of production. Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (pp. 1–16). Lancaster: Kluwer.
Button, G., & Sharrock, W. (2009). Studies of work and the workplace in HCI: Concepts and techniques. New Jersey: Morgan & Claypool.
Czyzewski, M. (1994). Reflexivity of actors versus the reflexivity of accounts. Theory, Culture and Society, 11, 161–168.
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Garfinkel, H. (1996). Ethnomethodology’s program. Social Psychology Quarterly, 59(1), 5–21.
Garfinkel, H., & Wieder, D. L. (1992). Two incommensurable, asymmetrically alternate technologies of social analysis. In G. Watson & S. M. Seiler (Eds.), Text in context: Contributions to ethnomethodology (pp. 175–206). New York: Sage.
Garfinkel, H., Lynch, M., & Livingston, E. (1981). The work of a discovering science construed with materials from the optically discovered pulsar. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 11, 131–158.
Hughes, J., Randall, D., & Shapiro, D. (1992). Faltering from ethnography to design. Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (pp. 115–122). Toronto: ACM.
Hughes, J., King, V., Rodden, T., & Andersen, H. (1994). Moving out of the control room: Ethnography in systems design. Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (pp. 429–438). Chapel Hill: ACM.
Hughes, J., O’Brien, J., Rodden, T., Rouncefield, M., & Blythin, S. (1997). Designing with ethnography: A presentation framework. Proceedings of the Symposium on Designing Interactive Systems (pp. 147–158). Amsterdam: ACM.
Husserl, E. (1999). The idea of phenomenology (L. Hardy, Trans.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Livingston, E. (2008). Ethnographies of reason. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Lynch, M. (1993). Scientific practice and ordinary action: Ethnomethodological and social studies of science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lynch, M. (2000). Against reflexivity as an academic virtue and source of privileged knowledge. Theory, Culture and Society, 17(3), 26–54.
Ryle, G. (1968). The thinking of thoughts: What is ‘Le Penseur’ doing?. University Lectures No. 18. Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan.
Sacks, H. (1984). Notes on methodology. In J. Maxwell & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 21–27). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sacks, H. (1992). In G. Jefferson (Ed.), Lectures on conversation. Oxford: Blackwell.
Suchman, L. (1987). Plans and situated actions: The problem of human-machine communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Crabtree, A., Rouncefield, M., Tolmie, P. (2012). Précis. In: Doing Design Ethnography. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-2726-0_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-2726-0_1
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