Comments on: A Journey from Ethnography to Design: Coastal Erosion Risk Mapping Project

By: Simon Johnson

Simon Johnson — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:13:28 +0000

For a comprehensive write-up Tom please take a look at Tom Hume's blog:
http://www.tomhume.org/2009/05/ux-brighton-ethnography.html

By: Markus Smet

Markus Smet — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:30:22 +0000

David - nicely explained, you've filled in a few more gaps in my thinking - good stuff!

By: David Gifford

David Gifford — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 04:00:46 +0000

This debate is silly -- the process described in the talk has a well-known epithet. The term is "design research" and encompasses methodologies derived from ethnography as part of its practice. It is a developing field without a singular practice, but the basic values, that of respecting that design has its own ways to knowing things that aren't always objective, are at work here and have been the subject of development and use by firms such as Flow, Ideo, Smart, Continuum, frog and others for decades.

The explosion of design research projects since the 80s has popularized ethnography as a phrase that gets bandied about as a short hand term for defining any research project that looks for insight based on empathetic methods as opposed to quantitative analysis or its poor relations such as focus groups or surveys.

I hear it used in marketing conversations all the time now, as well as in the world of interactive strategy. It verges on being a buzzword.

It is invariably closely followed by a conversation about the validity of its insight due to the smaller group of research subjects than quantitative methods employ.

There are many designers and researchers who feel that there is little to debate about categorizing the nature of this project. Its Design Research; there are so many practitioners of this sort of project it seems odd to me that some would feel the need to make up new definitions.

By: Simon Johnson

Simon Johnson — Thu, 28 May 2009 15:15:04 +0000

Thanks Ofer for covering the event nicely.

We use the word 'ethnography' as it best describes our field work.

We should question if this term is misleading or unhelpful. Personally I think we should describe our studies as 'field work' as I am a fan of plain speech. However, ethnographic research is a broad term that enjoys a wide range of uses....

The ethnographical method is used across a range of different disciples, primarily by anthropologists but also frequently by sociologists. Cultural studies, economics, social work, education, ethnomusicology, folklore, geography, linguistics, performance studies and psychology are other fields which have made use of ethnography.

Ethnography (Greek ἔθνος ethnos = folk/people and γράφειν graphein = writing) is a methodological strategy used to provide descriptions of human societies, which as a methodology does not prescribe any particular method (e.g. observation, interview, questionnaire), but instead prescribes the nature of the study (i.e. to describe people through writing) [1]. In the biological sciences, this type of study might be called a "field study" or a "case report," both of which are used as common synonyms for "ethnography"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnography