Faltering from ethnography to design

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore some, ways of linking ethnographic studies of work in context with the design of CSCW systems. It uses examples from an interdisciplinary collaborative project on air traffic control. Ethnographic methods are introduced, and applied to identifying the social organization of this cooperative work, and the use of instruments within it. On this basis some metaphors for the electronic representation of current manual practices are presented, and their possibilities and limitations are discussed.