BayCHI and Ethnography
I went to BayCHI on Tuesday and saw A Conversation with Bill Moggridge on Interaction Design and Understanding the Universal through Uniqueness by Jane Fulton Suri. Both were from IDEO — Bill is one of the founders. I especially liked what Jane had to say about keeping human issues at the center the process. She advocates using ethnographic methods not just to gather data about users, but to develop empathy and a better emotional understanding of the target user and how they might interact with what your designing.
A couple of those in the audience with an anthropological background had issues with how they’re trying to understand and particularly empathize with users, but in a practical sense I see no problem with it. To me it’s similar to how we adhere to best practices and appropriate procedures while usability testing, but we don’t try to create a perfect experimental (and overly academic) environment when we test users, unless the situation truly calls for it.
Either way, I like that it wasn’t just the typical “follow the user around and take lots of photos” ethnographic approach — they’ve diversified the ways in which they try to understand users in a manner that’s complementary and appropriate.