Reworking the Gaps between Design and Ethnography

Abstract

Since Dourish's critique of 'implications for design' [15], researchers have asked how design and ethnography should or could relate in HCI. Here we reflect on two experiences with cross-informing ongoing ethnographic investigation with the early stages of research through design. One uses speculative design to reflect on and inform ethnographic fieldwork on busyness in middle-class familes; the other uses speculative design to complement late-stage analysis of a historical ethnography of rural technological infrastructure. Rather than trying to do away with the gap between ethnography and design by seamlessly integrating the two processes, we reworked the relationship between ethnography and design by closing the gap in the temporal workflows while simultaneously maintaining a distinction in the performance of the two roles. We found that this new gap resulted in a series of misunderstandings; but by putting the two roles in active dialogue, we were able leverage misunderstandings into mutual benefit.