Ethnography Considered Harmful
Crabtree et. al
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Summary:
The CHI community have been increasingly using ethnographies as a method of analyzing people and cultures with the intent of developing applications and interfaces that will better cater to the targeted demographics. The authors of this article suggest that the increased use of these ethnographies in addition to straying from the traditional methods of carrying out an ethnography is harmful to the CHI community and CHI projects.
Discussion:
This paper was difficult for me to understand. I had a hard time figuring out where the authors were coming from. It seems to me that it would be beneficial to know who you are developing interfaces and applications for. Even if the interface or application was not written entirely for the user, but for a task (like Don Norman suggests in Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful), I still do not see how it can be detrimental to know your users a little better.
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To me, it wasn't saying Ethnography = Bad, it was saying Bad Ethnography = Bad. I think as a community, developers and software engineers can get caught up in doing the 'next big thing' and can lose sight of the point and value in some of the original practices. I think the point they're trying to make is that we need to focus on doing good ethnographies, not ethnographies for the sake of being trendy and such.
ReplyDeleteI think that Elgin is correct. They thought Ethnos were great and that people needed to stop changing them because they thought they were making them fit into their work better.
ReplyDeleteThe changing trend in ethnographies followed the changing trend in computers. If how we study something changes at the same time what we are studying changes how are we to compare to older studies to determine if it's good or bad? Stick with what works.
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