Abstract
This chapter outlines some key approaches towards understanding the unremarkable. It focuses first on a sociological orientation to the everyday world as key to the enterprise, and then on a variety of complimentary approaches for elaborating or surfacing the unremarkable character of everyday life. It considers the kinds of data resources that are routinely used to elaborate the unremarkable, and the relationship between data resource and analysis as a constituent element of working ‘in the wild’. We hope this will be a valuable resource for researchers and students alike.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Structured interviews also exist but these are otherwise known as ‘questionnaires’, the stuff of surveys and quantitative research.
- 2.
In the case of the psychiatric hostel, through field studies of the day-to-day work and rounds of the hostel staff involved in caring for residents, which provided insights to craft the probe packs around and ask the residents questions about that they could elaborate by returning probe materials (photos, maps, postcards, etc.) at their leisure.
- 3.
There are rare exceptions to written consent such as participants who cannot read or write - not including children (whose parents or legal guardians must consent to the research) - but where written consent can be obtained then it should.
References
Baille, L., & Benyon, D. (2007). Place and technology in the home. Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of Collaborative Computing, 17(2 & 3), 227–256.
Bannon, L., Bowers, J., Carstensen, P., Hughes, J., Kuutii, K., Pycock, J., Rodden, T., Schmidt. K., Shapiro, D., Sharrock, W., & Viller, S. (1993). Informing CSCW System Requirements. Esprit Basic Research Project 6225 Deliverable 2.1, www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/research/cseg/comic/deliverables/D2.1.ps.
Beyer, H., & Holtzblatt, K. (1999). Contextual design. ACM Interactions, 6(1), 32–42.
Boehner, K., Vertesi, J., Sengers, P., & Dourish, P. (2007). How HCI interprets probes. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1077–1086), San Jose, ACM.
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. W. (1997). The production of order and the order of production. In Proceedings of the European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (pp. 1–16). Kluwer Academic Press.
Cheverst, K., Clarke, K., Dewsbury, G., Hemmings, T., Kember, S., Rodden, T., et al. (2003). Designing assistive technologies for medication regimes in care settings. Universal Access in the Information Society, 2(3), 235–242.
Cicourel, A. (1964). Method and measurement in sociology. New York: Free Press of Glencoe.
Colley, J., Bedwell, B., Crabtree, A., & Rodden, T. (2013). Exploring reactions to widespread energy monitoring. In Proceedings of the IFIP TC13 Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 91–108). Cape Town, International Federation for Information Processing.
Crabtree, A., Rodden, T., Hemmings, T., & Benford, S. (2003a). Finding a place for ubicomp in the home. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (pp. 208–226). Seattle: Springer.
Crabtree, A., Hemmings, T., Rodden, T., Cheverst, K., Clarke, K, Dewsbury, G., Hughes, J., & Rouncefield, M. (2003b). Designing with care: Adapting cultural probes to inform design in sensitive settings. In Proceedings of Australasian Computer-Human Interaction Conference (pp. 4–13). Brisbane: Ergonomics Society of Australia.
Crabtree, A. (2004). The social life of Uncle Roy: Field report. Equator Technical Report, EPSRC GR/N15986/01. www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~axc/work/URAY.pdf.
Crabtree, A., & Rodden, T. (2009). Understanding interaction in hybrid ubiquitous computing environments. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Media, Article No. 1. Cambridge: ACM.
Crabtree, A., Rodden, T., Tolmie, P., & Button, G. (2009). Ethnography considered harmful. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 879–888). ACM: Boston (MA).
Crabtree, A., Rouncefield, M., & Tolmie, P. (2012). Doing design ethnography. London: Springer.
Crabtree, A., Tolmie, P., & Rouncefield, M. (2013). ‘How many bloody examples do you want?’ Fieldwork and generalisation. In Proceedings of the European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Paphos: Springer.
Dourish, P. and Bell, G. (2011) Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing, Cambridge (MA), MIT Press.
Gaver, W., Dunne, T., & Pacenti, E. (1999). Design: Cultural probes. ACM Interactions, 6(1), 21–29.
Gaver, W. (2001). Designing for ludic aspects of everyday life. ERCIM News, 47. www.ercim.eu/publication/Ercim_News/enw47/gaver.html.
Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine.
Hughes, J., King, V., Rodden, T., & Andersen, H. (1994). Moving out of the control room: ethnography in systems design. In Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (pp. 429–438). Chapel Hill: ACM.
Hutchinson, H., Mackay, W., Westerlund, B., Bederson, B., Druin, A., Plaisant, C., Beaudouin-Lafon, M., Conversy, S., Evans, H., Hansen, H., Roussel, N., Eiderbäck, B., Lindquist, S., & Sundblad, Y. (2003). Technology probes: Inspiring design for and with families. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 17–24). Fort Lauderdale: ACM.
ISO 9241. (2010). Ergonomics of human-system interaction—Part 210: Human-centred design for interactive systems. Switzerland: ISO.
Kyng, M. (1994). Collective resources meets puritanism. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, 6(1), 85–95.
Lazar, J., Feng, J., & Hochheiser, H. (2010). “Diaries”, Research Methods in Human Computer Interaction (pp. 125–141). Chichester: Wiley.
Malinowski, B. (1922). Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An account of native enterprise and adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Mumford, E. (1987). Socio-technical systems design. In G. Bjerknes, P. Ehn, & M. Kyng (Eds.), Computers and democracy: A scandinavian challenge (pp. 59–76). Aveshot: Avebury.
Petrelli, D., Whittaker, S., & Brockmeier, J. (2008). AutoTopography: What can physical mementoes tell us about digital memories? In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 53–62). Florence: ACM.
Ryle, G. (1970). The thinking of thoughts—What is Le Penseur doing? University Lectures No. 18, University of Saskatchewan.
Sacks, H. (1992). Doing ‘being ordinary’. In G. Jefferson (Ed.), Lectures in Conversation, Volume II, Part IV, Spring 1970, Lecture 1 (pp. 215–221). Oxford, Blackwell.
Schmidt, K. (1997). Of maps and scripts. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Supporting Group Work (pp. 138–147). Phoenix: ACM.
Snow, C. P. (1961). The two cultures and the scientific revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Syzmanski, M., & Whalen, J. (2011). Introduction: Work practice analysis at Xerox. In M. Szymanski & J. Whalen (Eds.), Making work visible: Ethnographically grounded case studies of work practice (pp. 1–17). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tolmie, P. (2011). Uncovering the unremarkable. In M. Syzmanski & J. Whalen (Eds.), Making work visible: ethnographically grounded case studies of work practice (pp. 53–73). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zimmerman, D., & Pollner, M. (1970). The everyday world as a phenomenon. In J. Douglas (Ed.), understanding everyday life (pp. 80–103). Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Crabtree, A., Tolmie, P., Chamberlain, A. (2020). “Research in the Wild”: Approaches to Understanding the Unremarkable as a Resource for Design. In: Chamberlain, A., Crabtree, A. (eds) Into the Wild: Beyond the Design Research Lab. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 48. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18020-1_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18020-1_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-18018-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-18020-1
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)