Moving out from the control room

TLDR

Ethnography is increasingly used to inform CSCW system design, but most studies rely on prolonged, domain‑constrained fieldwork. The paper examines how ethnography can be applied across varied projects and domains. The authors outline several ethnographic approaches for design, evaluating their advantages and challenges.

Abstract

Ethnography has gained considerable prominence as a technique for informing CSCW systems development of the nature of work. Experiences of ethnography reported to date have focused on the use of prolonged on-going enthnography to inform systems design. A considerable number of these studies have taken place within constrained and focused work domain. This paper reflects more generally on the experiences of using ethnography across a number of different projects and in a variety of domains of study. We identify a number of ways in which we have used ethnography to inform design and consider the benefits and problems of each.