posts tagged ‘ethnomethodology’

Mythbusting: Corporate ethnography and the giant green button

20 December 2010 | Editor

[contributed article to UXMag] Because ethnography provides a complete, nuanced, and valid picture of people’s practices, processes, and product use in context, it’s a powerful tool that can provide actionable insight and reduce corporate R&D risk. The pioneering use of social scientists in technology corporations -- often referred to as corporate ethnography -- has largely been attributed to, well, us. But this isn't intended to be a who-begat-whom post. We're just trying to set the record straight on the popular tale of ethnography at PARC, because the way the story unfolds reveals how powerful a tool it can be...

Ethnography in industry: Methods overview (part one)

14 June 2010 | James Glasnapp

It's really hard for companies to understand ethnography -- even after they understand what objectives it can be used for. In this second post in our series on ethnography, I thought it might be useful to provide an overview of data COLLECTION methods (and methodologies) that ethnographers use to understand a particular population or situation of interest; while specific needs vary, for our clients the general goal is to help them address a murky problem or innovate differentiated products. Note the emphasis on data "collection" as opposed to data ANALYSIS...The science and art of ethnography is not in a preset formula for these individual methods. It's in the selection, unique combination, customizations, and analysis -- which together can yield the "deep" understanding that in turn inspires innovation, or fosters change. There IS a method to the madness.