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Responsibilities and implications: further thoughts on ethnography and design

Author:
Paul Dourish
University of California, Irvine, CA
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Published: 05 November 2007 Publication History

Abstract

Many researchers and practitioners in user experience design have turned towards social sciences to find ways to understand the social contexts in which both users and technologies are embedded. Ethnographic approaches are increasingly prominent as means by which this might be accomplished. However, a very wide range of forms of social investigation travel under the "ethnography" banner in HCI, suggesting that there is still considerable debate over what ethnography is and how it can best be employed in design contexts.
Building on earlier discussions and debates around ethnography and its implications, this paper explores how ethnographic methods might be consequential for design. In particular, it illustrates the implications for design that might be derived from classical ethnographic material and shows that these may not be of the form that HCI research normally imagines or expects.

References

[1]
Abu-Lughod, A. 2000. Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California.
[2]
Boehner, K., DePaula, R., Dourish, P., and Sengers, P. 2005. Affect: From Information to Interaction. Proc. Critical Computing: Fourth Decennial Aarhus Conference (Aarhus, Denmark).
[3]
Brewer, J., Bassoli, A., Martin, K., Dourish, P., and Mainwaring, S. In press. Aesthetic Journeys: Rethinking Urban Computing. IEEE Pervasive Computing.
[4]
Castells, M. 1989. The Informational City: Information Technology, Economic Restructuring, and the Urban Regional Process. Oxford: Blackwell.
[5]
Cresswell, T. 2006. On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World. London: Routledge.
[6]
Dourish, P. 2006. Implications for Design. Proc. ACM Conf. Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI 2006 (Montreal, Canada), 541--550.
[7]
Hill, R. 1995. Blackfellas and Whitefellas: Aboriginal Land Rights, The Mabo Decision, and the Meaning of Land. Human Rights Quarterly, 17(2), 303--322.
[8]
Keesing, R. 1974. Theories of Culture. Annual Reviews in Anthropology, 3, 73--97.
[9]
Lutz, C. 1986. Emotion, Thought, and Estrangement: Emotion as a Cultural Category. Cultural Anthropology, 1(3), 287--309.
[10]
Lutz, C. 1988. Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on an Micronesian Atoll and their Challenge to Western Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[11]
Malkki, L. 1992. National Geographic: The Rootedness of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity Amongst Scholars and Refugees. Cultural Anthropology, 7(1), 24--44.
[12]
Malkki, L. 1995. Purity and Exile: Memory and National Cosmology amongst Hutu Refugees in Tanzania. Chicago.
[13]
Marcus, G. 1995. Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 95--117.
[14]
Munn, N. 1996. Excluded Spaces: The Figure in the Australian Aboriginal Landscape. Critical Inquiry, 22(3), 446--465.
[15]
Myers, F. 1979. Emotions and the Self: A Theory of Personhood and Political Order amongst Pintupi Aboriginals. Ethos, 7(4), 343--370.
[16]
Norman, D. 2004. Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. Basic Books.
[17]
Ortner, S. 1984. Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 26(1), 126--166.
[18]
Picard, R. 1997. Affective Computing. Cambridge: MIT Press.
[19]
Rosaldo, M. 1983. The Shame of Headhunters and the Autonomy of Self. Ethos, 11(3), 135--151.
[20]
Smith, B. C. 1996. On the Origin of Objects. Cambridge: MIT Press.
[21]
Turnbull, D. 2000. Masons, Tricksters, and Cartographers: Comparative Studies in the Sociology of Scientific and Indigenous Knowledge. Amsterdam: Harwood.
[22]
Verran, H. 1998. Re-imagining Land Ownership in Australia. Postcolonial Studies, 1(2), 237--254.
[23]
Yengoyan, A. 1986. Theory in Anthropology: The Demise of the Concept of Culture. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 28(2), 368--374.

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  • (2024)Searching for the Non-Consequential: Dialectical Activities in HCI and the Limits of ComputersProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641945(1-13)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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cover image ACM Conferences
DUX '07: Proceedings of the 2007 conference on Designing for User eXperiences
November 2007
279 pages
ISBN:9781605583082
DOI:10.1145/1389908
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Permissions@acm.org

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Published: 05 November 2007

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Author Tags

  1. affective computing
  2. design
  3. ethnography
  4. methodology
  5. mobility
  6. ubiquitous computing

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DUX07
DUX07: Designing the User Experience
November 5 - 7, 2007
Illinois, Chicago

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Overall Acceptance Rate 59 of 59 submissions, 100%

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  • (2024)Who is “I”?: Subjectivity and Ethnography in HCIProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642727(1-15)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2024)Searching for the Non-Consequential: Dialectical Activities in HCI and the Limits of ComputersProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641945(1-13)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2023)Co-Developing an Easy-to-Use Learning Analytics Dashboard for Teachers in Primary/Secondary Education: A Human-Centered Design ApproachEducation Sciences10.3390/educsci1312119013:12(1190)Online publication date: 26-Nov-2023
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  • (2022)Looking for ethnography in design research through three decadesThe Design Journal10.1080/14606925.2022.208130425:4(556-576)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2022
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References

References

[1]
Abu-Lughod, A. 2000. Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California.
[2]
Boehner, K., DePaula, R., Dourish, P., and Sengers, P. 2005. Affect: From Information to Interaction. Proc. Critical Computing: Fourth Decennial Aarhus Conference (Aarhus, Denmark).
[3]
Brewer, J., Bassoli, A., Martin, K., Dourish, P., and Mainwaring, S. In press. Aesthetic Journeys: Rethinking Urban Computing. IEEE Pervasive Computing.
[4]
Castells, M. 1989. The Informational City: Information Technology, Economic Restructuring, and the Urban Regional Process. Oxford: Blackwell.
[5]
Cresswell, T. 2006. On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World. London: Routledge.
[6]
Dourish, P. 2006. Implications for Design. Proc. ACM Conf. Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI 2006 (Montreal, Canada), 541--550.
[7]
Hill, R. 1995. Blackfellas and Whitefellas: Aboriginal Land Rights, The Mabo Decision, and the Meaning of Land. Human Rights Quarterly, 17(2), 303--322.
[8]
Keesing, R. 1974. Theories of Culture. Annual Reviews in Anthropology, 3, 73--97.
[9]
Lutz, C. 1986. Emotion, Thought, and Estrangement: Emotion as a Cultural Category. Cultural Anthropology, 1(3), 287--309.
[10]
Lutz, C. 1988. Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on an Micronesian Atoll and their Challenge to Western Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[11]
Malkki, L. 1992. National Geographic: The Rootedness of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity Amongst Scholars and Refugees. Cultural Anthropology, 7(1), 24--44.
[12]
Malkki, L. 1995. Purity and Exile: Memory and National Cosmology amongst Hutu Refugees in Tanzania. Chicago.
[13]
Marcus, G. 1995. Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 95--117.
[14]
Munn, N. 1996. Excluded Spaces: The Figure in the Australian Aboriginal Landscape. Critical Inquiry, 22(3), 446--465.
[15]
Myers, F. 1979. Emotions and the Self: A Theory of Personhood and Political Order amongst Pintupi Aboriginals. Ethos, 7(4), 343--370.
[16]
Norman, D. 2004. Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. Basic Books.
[17]
Ortner, S. 1984. Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 26(1), 126--166.
[18]
Picard, R. 1997. Affective Computing. Cambridge: MIT Press.
[19]
Rosaldo, M. 1983. The Shame of Headhunters and the Autonomy of Self. Ethos, 11(3), 135--151.
[20]
Smith, B. C. 1996. On the Origin of Objects. Cambridge: MIT Press.
[21]
Turnbull, D. 2000. Masons, Tricksters, and Cartographers: Comparative Studies in the Sociology of Scientific and Indigenous Knowledge. Amsterdam: Harwood.
[22]
Verran, H. 1998. Re-imagining Land Ownership in Australia. Postcolonial Studies, 1(2), 237--254.
[23]
Yengoyan, A. 1986. Theory in Anthropology: The Demise of the Concept of Culture. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 28(2), 368--374.