Supporting ethnographic studies of ubiquitous computing in the wild

ABSTRACT

Ethnography has become a staple feature of IT research over the last twenty years, shaping our understanding of the social character of computing systems and informing their design in a wide variety of settings. The emergence of ubiquitous computing raises new challenges for ethnography however, distributing interaction across a burgeoning array of small, mobile devices and online environments which exploit invisible sensing systems. Understanding interaction requires ethnographers to reconcile interactions that are, for example, distributed across devices on the street with online interactions in order to assemble coherent understandings of the social character and purchase of ubiquitous computing systems. We draw upon four recent studies to show how ethnographers are replaying system recordings of interaction alongside existing resources such as video recordings to do this and identify key challenges that need to be met to support ethnographic study of ubiquitous computing in the wild.

REFERENCES

• 1: Barkhuus, L. et al. (2005) "Picking pockets on the lawn", Proc. of UbiComp '05, pp. 358--74, Tokyo: Springer.
• 2: Benford, S. et al. (2003) "Coping with uncertainty in a location-based game", IEEE Pervasive Computing, vol. 2 (3), pp. 34--41.
• 3: Benford, S. et al. (2004) "Uncle Roy All Around You", Proc. of ACE'04, Singapore: ACM.
• 4: Benford, S. et al. (2004) "The error of our ways", Proc. of UbiComp'04, pp. 70-87, Nottingham, UK: Springer.
• 5: Steve Benford , Andy Crabtree , Martin Flintham , Adam Drozd , Rob Anastasi , Mark Paxton , Nick Tandavanitj , Matt Adams , Ju Row-Farr, Can you see me now?, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.13 n.1, p.100-133, March 2006 [doi>10.1145/1143518.1143522]
• 6: Steve Benford , Duncan Rowland , Martin Flintham , Adam Drozd , Richard Hull , Josephine Reid , Jo Morrison , Keri Facer, Life on the edge: supporting collaboration in location-based experiences, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 02-07, 2005, Portland, Oregon, USA [doi>10.1145/1054972.1055072]
• 7: Barry Brown , Ian MacColl , Matthew Chalmers , Areti Galani , Cliff Randell , Anthony Steed, Lessons from the lighthouse: collaboration in a shared mixed reality system, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/642611.642711]
• 8: Bittner, E. (1973) "Objectivity and realism in sociology", Phenomenological Sociology (ed. Psathas, G.), pp. 109--125, New York: John Wiley.
• 9: Andy Crabtree , Steve Benford , Tom Rodden , Chris Greenhalgh , Martin Flintham , Rob Anastasi , Adam Drozd , Matt Adams , Ju Row-Farr , Nick Tandavanitj , Anthony Steed, Orchestrating a mixed reality game 'on the ground', Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.391-398, April 24-29, 2004, Vienna, Austria [doi>10.1145/985692.985742]
• 10: Andy Crabtree, Design in the absence of practice: breaching experiments, Proceedings of the 2004 conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques, August 01-04, 2004, Cambridge, MA, USA [doi>10.1145/1013115.1013125]
• 11: Crabtree, A. (2005) "The social life of Uncle Roy", Equator Technical Report.
• 12: Crabtree, A. and Rouncefield, M. (2005) "Working with text logs", Proc. of 1st International Conference on eSocial Science, Manchester: ESRC. www.mrl.nott.ac.uk/~axc/documents/eSS_2005.pdf
• 13: Czyzewski, M. (1994) "Reflexivity of actors versus the reflexivity of accounts", Theory, Culture and Society, vol. 11, pp. 161--168.
• 14: Martin Flintham , Steve Benford , Rob Anastasi , Terry Hemmings , Andy Crabtree , Chris Greenhalgh , Nick Tandavanitj , Matt Adams , Ju Row-Farr, Where on-line meets on the streets: experiences with mobile mixed reality games, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/642611.642710]
• 15: Garfinkel, H. (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
• 16: Garfinkel, H. and Sacks, H. (1970) "On formal structures of practical action", Theoretical Sociology (eds. McKinney, J.C. and Tiryakian, E.), pp. 160--193, New York: Apple-Century-Crofts.
• 17: Garfinkel, H. (2001) Ethnomethodology's Program: Working Out Durkheim's Aphorism (ed. Rawls, A.), Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.
• 18: Geertz, C. (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books.
• 19: David M. Hilbert , David F. Redmiles, Extracting usability information from user interface events, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.32 n.4, p.384-421, Dec. 2000 [doi>10.1145/371578.371593]
• 20: John A. Hughes , David Randall , Dan Shapiro, Faltering from ethnography to design, Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work, p.115-122, November 01-04, 1992, Toronto, Ontario, Canada [doi>10.1145/143457.143469]
• 21: Melody Y. Ivory , Marti A Hearst, The state of the art in automating usability evaluation of user interfaces, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.33 n.4, p.470-516, December 2001 [doi>10.1145/503112.503114]
• 22: Joke Kort , Henk de Poot, Usage analysis: combining logging and qualitative methods, CHI '05 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 02-07, 2005, Portland, OR, USA [doi>10.1145/1056808.1057117]
• 23: Lyotard, J-F. (1984) "The post modern condition", Theory and History of Literature, vol. 10, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• 24: Macbeth, D. (2001) "On'reflexivity' in qualitative research: two readings, and a third", Qualitative Inquiry, vol. 7, pp. 35--68.
• 25: Wendy E. Mackay , Michel Beaudouin-Lafon, DIVA: exploratory data analysis with multimedia streams, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.416-423, April 18-23, 1998, Los Angeles, California, United States [doi>10.1145/274644.274701]
• 26: Ryle, G. (1971) "The thinking of thoughts", University Lectures No. 18, University of Saskatchewan: Canada.
• 27: Sacks, H. (1992) "The baby cried. The mommy picked it up.", Lectures on Conversation (ed. Jefferson, G.), pp. 236--242, Oxford: Blackwell.
• 28: Sharrock, W. and Anderson, R. (1991) "Epistemology", Ethnomethodology and the Human Sciences (ed. Button, G.), pp. 51--76, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• 29: Suchman, L. (1987) Plans and Situated Action, Cambridge: CUP.
• 30: Peter Tolmie , James Pycock , Tim Diggins , Allan MacLean , Alain Karsenty, Unremarkable computing, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Changing our world, changing ourselves, April 20-25, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA [doi>10.1145/503376.503448]
• 31: Allison Woodruff , Margaret H. Szymanski , Rebecca E. Grinter , Paul M. Aoki, Practical strategies for integrating a conversation analyst in an iterative design process, Proceedings of the conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques, June 25-28, 2002, London, England [doi>10.1145/778712.778748]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.3 SPECIAL-PURPOSE AND APPLICATION-BASED SYSTEMS

Keywords:
ethnography, record and replay, ubiquitous computing