This week’s theme revolved around ethnography and how it relates to the computer science world. Each article takes a different approach to ethnography, and while reading the pieces, I noticed ethnography has a loose definition and can be twisted and molded to fit the topic one is talking about. The articles this week are – Implications for Design (1) by Paul Dourish, The Ethnography of Infrastructure (2) by Susan Leigh Star, and The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design (3).
Article 1 is has technical jargon and difficult for this archivist in training to get through. But from my understanding, Dourish is trying to tie HCI (human centered interaction) and its adoption to ethnographic infrastructure. He draws on three explorations of problems of ethnography and design in different contexts to help his argument in this paper – “Anderson’s exploration of the issue of ethnography and requirements, Ackerman’s reflections on the social-technical gap, Button’s comparison between different models for ethnographic analysis, and Suchman’s account of forms of ethnographic encounter between technologists and customers.”
Article 2 uses a the telephone book as a metaphor to ethnography and to ask the methodological questions about infrastructure. Star focuses on infrastructure, and the ethnography of it. Honing in on infrastructure as a concept, making the reader think differently about the “boring” parts of computer science. Honestly, she uses too many metaphors and I feel her argument gets lost in them.
Article 3 is a book and almost 200 pages long. But it is broken up into sections – Mindsets, Methods, Ideation and Implementation. With this in mind, the reader knows the it is a field guide to help people better understand the technology they are working with. What resonated with me was the authors’ to talk about failure and how it is apart of the HCI world. By failing, one learns about the design and can make it better in the next round. The field guide ties human emotions to technology; which is smart due to the fact it is dealing with HCI concepts.
Overall, the readings were trying to tie humans to the technology they use and then how the designers could make it better.
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