Will Web For Food

Introduction.

Ethnography is the descriptive study of the habits and traditions of the people, providing the lifestyle of a human group in a specific period and context. It is based on the use of qualitative methodology, although in practice the main techniques include participant observation and interviews.

As a discipline, is part of anthropology theory.

This may seem to distant to interaction design but it is only a matter of semantics. If you replace “people” by “users” it seems reasonable to include ethnography in the methodological arsenal of interaction design

How to conduct ethnographic research.

To make a plan is to identify and fix ideas. It is to have had ideas.

Towards a new architecture, Le Corbusier

The user research is a process that gives greater strength to our design decisions. Helping to avoid wasting time arguing. You are doing science, not an exotic hobby or a detail within the project.
Ethnographic research is composed by a series of processes that can be shown in the following steps.

# 1 Steps before ethnographic analysis:

In this phase, you do preparations to conduct the investigation. If for example, your project involves the redesign of a web application, during the previous phase you should obtain information on the application functionality (eg what are the main features, if they are the same for all departments, etc.), use scenarios, (does everyone connect the same way, uses similar equipment, are there several ways to access the application, are there different scenarios?) the profile or profiles of the users (experience, percentage of use application in a day, most used features, can I combine profiles?), to know the history of the product (is it the company’s internal development or a development of third parties?. Are the users happy with the product?), to know the company culture and get the permissions. You must remember that people are working so you may find some difficulty in that regard. The High-tech firms may fail to fully understand the objectives of the field research, you should have plots ready.

# 2 Research:

At this stage you contact with the users and seek knowledge. You should set a timetable of interviews with different profiles. All this may sound very confusing for a technical manager, so one possible strategy is asking him/her to show you his/her routine. Another one could be asking the company to give you the training that is often applied to people who join the company. You can use various methods, such as an in-depth interview. This type of research is called Flexible Research because the parameters of research are not defined, a feature of ethnographic analysis

# 3 Analysis:

You already have a lot of information (in fact maybe too much), the transcripts of the interviews do not contribute in any data itself, and in your head it is increasingly clear what is wrong with the product. A good way to avoid researcher bias is encoding your data. For example, you can mapping of activities for the profiles, and contrast them with the project requirements and functional analysis.
If you can reduce the data to a process maps it will be much easier to align the objectives of the project for all stakeholders

# 4 Use your research:

How affects your data to the project? , How the data provide the certainty that the use of the product will be more successful in the future? How the company will do the managing change? The redesign improved dramatically affect into organization? We can take binding opinions on the desirability of defining according to a workflow process for all involved.

Conclusions.

Why do you do an ethnographic research? Because the main reason the projects fail is communication problems rather than development problems. Knowing the needs, desires and frustrations of those associated with the product may be useful for the success of your project.

Sometimes, the project development managers only have contact with those stakeholders, who speak on behalf of users, making decisions that have difficult consequences to quantify and predict.

Development teams can also take biased decisions based on their own choices and tastes. And this is reflected in the interface and affects the end user, generating anger and difficulty of use.

To avoid these situations you can make an ethnographic research

References.

IDEO method carts

A synthesis of ethnographic research

Some year ago, the people that worked developed an interface was called “interface designers”.

Years later this name was changed because it was
generalist for the new jobs, more specific. the name “Interface designer” included all people take part in interface from developer until graphic designer.

Arisen new names as:

• Interaction designers: people involved in the design of all the interactive aspects of a product, not just the graphic design of an interface.

• Usability engineers: people who focus on evaluating products, using usability methods and principles.

• Web designers: people who develop and create the visual design of websites such as layouts.

• Information architects: people who come up with ideas of how to plan and structure interactive products, especially websites.

• User-experience designers: people who do all the above but who may also carry out field studies to inform the design of products.

Sometime these names is used as synonyms, when it aren´t. This is a important problem for the profession, because:

Hinders the development of knowledge, penalizes salary range and it create professional profiles not specialist.

Summer arrives and with it a little free time. It is a good time in our recommended reading list for the holidays.

The first book is HERE COMES EVERYBODY (How Change Happens When People Come Together) by Clasy Shirky, about people and technology interact as both at the social level, as this affects relationships, the job and media. A lot of views is really useful.

The second book is STUMBLING ON HAPPINESS by Dan (iel) Gilbert a tour of how the human mind, emotions and decisions, with a very enjoyable and easy to read. Very interesting.

The third book is MODULAR WEB DESIGN by Nathan Curtis, if you think that something can be improved in the way of working your team, this is your reading. The book is about how to perform prototyping and documentation in an efficient manner within a development team. The typical book that I always think that we need to write.

Enjoy your summer time and your readings.