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Oct 19

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R3: Ethnography and Contextual Inquiry

What are the differences and similarities in ethnography, contextual inquiry, and design ethnography? When would you use each?

Permanent link to this article: https://www.gillianhayes.com/Inf231F12/r3-ethnography-and-contextual-inquiry/

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  1. Armando Pensado

    All three methods are centered around the idea that what people say they do and what they actually do can be quite different. Most importantly, all three methods require the researcher/observer/designer to gather information in the place and context the user operates. Although less emphasized on design ethnography, all three methods also advocate the observer being an active participant in the process.

    I think the biggest difference between ethnography and the other two methods is that ethnography’s goals are more open ended, seeking to generate interpretations and modify existing understandings. Contextual inquiry and design ethnography on the other hand have the specific goal of providing information that can be more directly used in the design process. Consequently these two methods use somewhat stricter constraints such as defining a project scope for contextual inquiry and establishing sampling criteria and research objectives for design ethnography.

    Since ethnography is more focused on new ways of seeing and less on acquiring domain knowledge I think it is better suited for studying complex areas where the researchers/designers already have some background knowledge. This way they can come up with a better understanding than what they might be naturally inclined to believe given their prior knowledge. Contextual inquiry is particularly well suited for areas in which the researchers have little prior knowledge since a lot of emphasis is placed on learning in detail what the user does and how they do it. Both contextual inquiry and design ethnography would probably be better choices when there are strict time and/or budget constraints since they seem to be more closely directed at producing tangible results like an artifact.

  2. Xinlu Tong

    The similarities in ethnography, contextual inquiry, and design ethnography are obvious. They all need researchers to be involved in real working context or culture of the users. Researchers can observe and conduct interviews on users and record data and descriptions. With this kind of synchronization with users, researchers can get first-hand information that they cannot acquire when users are not work at that time, since human always forgets something and many things cannot be put into words when we experience them.

    But there are also differences in these three methods. Contextual inquiry is more intentional and specific compared to ethnographical methods. Questions for the interviews are well-planed and researchers ask questions to users frequently when they work, trying to reach to a design solution in a short period. Ethnography, however, tends to be more open-ended. Reports often contain many details and are objective. Researchers need to rearrange those data to get direction for the next step. Design Ethnography is improved ethnography that is aimed to solve design problems. Profiles and scenarios of this method are all well-formed and concise. Researchers also make many diagrams and graphs to better understand records.

    In my opinion, we can use contextual inquiry for most cases, but for some areas that users need to concentrate on operation, such flight and communication, we can use ethnographic methods since users cannot spare time to answer questions. Also, if we don’t quite familiar with the domain, we can use ethnographic methods to gather as much data as possible, then rearrange them to elicit valuable information for our design. In addition, we can use these three methods only when case study is enough for our sake, since sometimes only a great number of statistical data can tell something.

  3. Sreevatsa Krishnapur Sreeraman

    Ethnography, in general, is the study of the behavior of a group of people, so grouped based on a unifying characteristic like culture, profession etc.., in their natural environment, by participating in the activities of the group. These principles are applied to Design form generalizations based on the holistic insight into the interaction with each other and with their surroundings, so that the product so designed can blend into the life of the target audience and be accepted by them. Contextual Inquiry is a specialized case of Ethnographic Design, where the participation is minimal to observing the user in the natural environment, speaking to the user to gain understanding of the interactions and form an interpretation into design principles to apply in practice.
    The similarity between all these methods is that the emphasis is on the user being in the natural habitat and state of mind. The basis here is to examine the behavior of the user when the user is performing activities in a ready-to-hand or non-rationalizing fashion and the inherent assumption is that, the user may not be able to describe the activities when asked to rationalize and think about what they are doing.
    The major difference between ethnography design and contextual inquiry is the participation level of the ethnographer. While pure ethnographical approach suggests active participation in the activity, contextual inquiry draws the line at observation and interviewing the user about the interaction.
    I agree with Armando’s view of how the methods will be used. Moreover, I feel Ethnography is normally involved to gain a deeper understanding of phenomena that may not be able to be explained by the comparatively superficial method applied by Contextual Inquiry. So, I think pure Ethnography would be much suited to research oriented approaches and Contextual Inquiry would be pertinent to more practical design approaches.

  4. Anshu Singh

    Ethnography describes an event with respect to a particular setting and circumstances around it. Though HCI draws from or uses principles of ethnography to research towards human centered design or event, it differs in the sense, as it explicitly aims to cover a wide and diverse range of population.

    Ethnography is master set of subsets namely contextual inquiry and design ethnography; both the subsets are derivations of ethnography. Contextual Inquiry shares same goals as ethnography, like understanding why and how a user does what he does, however with the intention of acute reasoning behind it and for the purpose of creating a new system to do facilitate the same job. Thus, contextual inquiry is implementation of data gathered through questionnaires and surveys for creating something, whereas ethnography is comparatively open-ended.

    Design ethnography is in a way application of ethnomethodology in real world design problem. Designers can take the abstract from ethnographic researches to apply in actual design questions, and with the help of tested design methodologies they can come up with a solution that can solve the design problem for masses.

    Here, I would give a hypothetical example of how I would apply these distinct yet conjoint approaches. To solve the water supply problem in rural areas we can undertake an ethnographic study of the region. With help of contextual inquiries we can collect data like sources of water, rainfall cycle, means of storage of water, density of the population affected by it, what localities do to overcome this problem etc. Then, come up with a design ethnographic solution like building artificial man made lakes, dams, reservoirs, and irrigation methods for taking care of food supply.

  5. Martin S.

    Broadly, ethnography, contextual inquiry, and design ethnography each require the researcher to observationally survey the context of product or tool use. However, the methods branch by their intended goals, and correspondingly by the specific methodological practices.

    The ethnographer makes thorough recordings of the context under observation, unassuming about the importance of any given practice. This holistic approach requires the researcher to be unassuming, and vulnerable to the range of possibilities. The design ethnographer, in contrast, considers the requirements more pointedly, thereby approaching the context with designated goals.

    Contextual inquiry also examines the user in context, but unlike pure ethnography, is deliberately understanding work practices and culture on the level of the individual stakeholder. To that effect, individual stakeholders are usually interviewed and probed on their feelings and responses to the dynamic work situation. Responses are collated and affinity diagrammed to highlight the most prominent threads. The methods correspond, then, to the researcher’s intentions, and scope of their consideration.

  6. Surendra Bisht

    All these three methodologies studies users in context. These methodologies do not rely on just what users say but extend their approach to observe what users do in practice. They observe users action in their workplace or in their more natural settings. Contextual Inquiry and design ethnography are derived from traditional ethnography.

    Contextual inquiry tries to understand and interpret the data gathered during the process rather than having a open-ended view as in case of ethnography. Other difference is that in contextual inquiry the investigator is not a passive observer. He/she is actively involved to gain understanding of how things happen and ask questions about his/her understanding of whole situation. On the other hand, ethnography tends to keep unbiased and open-ended view of situation. Contextual inquiry should be used in a situation where the intention is to design a new system based on collected data.

    Design ethnography is a technique where traditional ethnography meets the design. Generally, by the design phase requirements are fixed, as in case of contextual inquiry, but with design ethnography technique designers work with ethnographers to refine requirements to understand users better and focus on user experience. Design ethnography could be used in a situation where an organization has targeted users segment and it wants to understand users better for the future products.

  7. Jie

    All of the three approaches are associated with analysis of human behavior. Ethnography provides understanding of people’s everyday life. Contextual inquiry helps to understand customer’s need, desires their approaches to the work. Design ethnography is to incorporate ethnography into design process to invent or produce a new technology or tool. All of the three approaches have some similar principles. For instance, to get the best information, designers need to go to the customer’s workplace to observe or participate in the activities. The interview strategies for ethnography and contextual inquiry are also similar to each other, such as making the interviewee “nosy”, acting as an apprentice, etc.

    Ethnography has a broader range of research than contextual inquiry. Contextual inquiry is more focused on research topic, which probably ends up with a new product, however, ethnography tilts more power towards understanding general way of people living in everyday life, which might end up with enhancing people’s experiences or services, such as working models or shopping patterns. Design ethnography is used in design process while the other two are doing the research, analyzing the requirements, which is the first step of designing a product or technology.

    As contextual inquiry is more focused on finding out customer’s need, their working environment and how they work, etc., I think it is suitable for requirement analysis of software products. Because we’ve already defined topics related to the problem, all we need is to figure out what people need. Design ethnography should be used to analyze customers’ reaction or feelings about the new product or technology, which will help us evaluate and then enhance the product. Since ethnography is sort of qualitative research exploring the social interaction, I think it could be used to deal with such problems as how to enhance people’s relationship.

  8. Parul Seth

    Ethnography, design ethnography and contextual inquiry are all qualitative research methods that use concrete data derived from real experiences observed and recorded in natural environments, which when analyzed, interpreted and re-interpreted fuel in building usable systems for the actual users. The commonalities are many because they are essentially methodological derivatives of the ideology of “knowing the user” by defining ways of connecting with people in their work or living environments. All these methods help in extracting the tacit facts which unfold freely when people are observed in their natural settings or context, escaping the inherit complexity involved in other methods where what people say might be different from what they actually do. Evidently, all three methods consume a considerable amount of time and resources and being qualitative fail to produce quantifiable data like surveys do. But even if they miss on generating huge numbers which at times don’t really speak-up, the outcomes of these methods are consistently resonant and in-sync with the real needs of the people.

    The differences between the three methods can be broadly seen in terms of “focus”, “time” and “scope”. Ethnography gives a holistic view of the target group affected by the social, cultural and environmental factors thus focus is not on designing a particular product, which is the case in design ethnography and contextual inquiry. Design ethnographers have objectives that are much clearer and well-defined, rather more design-oriented. Also, ethnography being so complete needs time which can range from months to years, whereas contextual inquiry can be done in few hours or days. The users in contextual inquiry are partners in the methodology they equally participate in the collection as well as interpretation of information that is gathered and analyzed; it involves one-to-one interviews, brainstorming sessions, it is much more directed towards the product. Ethnographers do planned observations, which may involve interviews, but they try not to influence the group under study by any means.

    For the same kind of goal I will use Ethnography if the budget and time is sufficient to justify the holistic nature of the method to produce results which can be widely applied not only to particular product but to the field of study. I will use design ethnography if with the above resources I also have an understanding of the actual design-product. I will use contextual inquiry if the target users are easily accessible for, the time and budget is limited and if the product in consideration has a direct effect on only a particular group of people.

  9. Xinning Gui

    Ethnography, Contextual Inquiry, and design ethnography are all qualitative research methods. They all collect data in an everyday context to gain rich first-hand materials and deeply understand research targets. Also, they share some specific methods, such as observation and interview.

    However, there are differences among them. First, Contextual Inquiry and design ethnography have the intention of design. They aim to study stakeholders to collect requirements for design, but ethnography is open-ended, having no pre-existing goal of design. Second, Contextual Inquiry and design ethnography need the investigator to bring some hypothesis to test, while ethnography requires the ethnographer not to be constrained by pre-determined goal and assumptions. Third, Contextual Inquiry and design ethnography need to be short and quick to meet the design process. By contrast, ethnography intends to know as much as possible about the research target, which usually needs a long-term immersive study. Moreover, Contextual Inquiry admits and needs appropriate interruption. In ethnography and design ethnography, the researcher needs to be unobtrusive.

    If I have sufficient time, and also have no specific goal, I would like to adopt ethnography to understand as much as possible about my research target, helping me to form a design idea. If I need to modify or test design in a limited period, I will choose Contextual Inquiry and design ethnography. Since safety should be taken into account, I will not use Contextual Inquiry to distract people from their high-risk tasks. In this case, I prefer design ethnography.

  10. Chuxiong Wu

    Basically, I think the similarities in ethnography, contextual inquiry and design ethnography is the researcher or designer will get close to users’ life to understand the context and to collect information that what users really need. Since most of users can’t express their thoughts (needs) appropriately or even have no ideas. Thereby these methods focus on users (people) that will discovery potential problems in reality; especially, researchers or designers can observe complete interaction in those products or services which need multiple people to work together.

    Differently, ethnography is a broader research approach than other two. Ethnography includes many methodologies to understand human behavior or cultures per observation, writing/reading and exploration. Such like researches concentrate in ethnic study, history, biology and so on. So it uncovers potential new thoughts and understanding. Design ethnography is a combination of design and business. This method not only simply records the understanding of a situation, but also recreates insights thoughts from designers. Contextual inquiry is a specific inquiry to explore and investigate users, that how users understand context and collect data, to help interaction design a better organized information.

    Thus, contextual inquiry can be well use in observation users’ context and analysis how they work, how they feel, what they want and so on. It offers practical investigations to researchers. Besides, researchers can gather effective data by participating into users’ context. Hopefully, researchers may also discover potential problems based on their professional background; since researchers can investigate first-hand data, they. On the other hand, by using ethnography research approaches, designers could figure out new opportunities and observe new insights which contextual inquiry can’t offer.

  11. matthew chan

    where is my comment…?

    1. matthew chan

      Well. My first post somehow disappeared after i clicked the Submit comment…

      Anyway, the three techniques are all qualitative methods to — in my personal opinion — expose design flaws. There might be a few times when these ethnographic techniques can guide design in the beginning, but i think they are more valuable towards the later stages of designing a product/item.

      In binary lenses, i also view ethnography has a tool for academia and Contextual Inquiry + Design Ethnography oriented towards industry. According to Helsinki Design Lab, “Ethnography is one way to get closer to the everyday reality that designs proposals will be situated within. Design ethnography is generally considered to be a light-weight version of established practices in the social sciences.” Personally, i’m not a fan of ethnography. It sounds more like a vacation bc the idea of immersing myself in another culture for 12-18 months sounds pretty exciting! However, as a software and technology enthusiast, 18 months is a long time. By then, the iPhone 6 and the iPad 4 will be out…

      1. gillian

        awww…. wordpress is a pain sometimes… good design experience though :)

  12. Dongzi Chen

    As far as I can see, ethnography, contextual inquiry, and design ethnography have a kind of inclusion relation mutually. Design ethnography is using ethnographic techniques to do an industry design, and contextual inquiry is a user-centered design ethnographic research method, concluded by the contextual design. If we see it in this way the similarities and differences are quite obvious.
    The similarities are all three need a specific reach in a specific context. No matter for each of them, participation is the most critical prerequisite. Researchers have to join the communities and gather first-hand information from informants, mostly through interviews, observation. Researchers have to make themselves infuse into their targets, and try their best to understand their informants.

    The differences are also very outstanding. Ethnography is an open-ended and long term study and a qualitative research design aimed at exploring cultural phenomena. The resulting field study or a case report reflects the knowledge and the system of meanings in the lives of a cultural group. Its goal is to understand the socio-cultural ecosystem as a whole, by living in the community for months, or even years.

    However, A contextual inquiry interview is usually structured as an approximately two-hour, one-on-one interaction. A contextual inquiry always focuses on a topic which is relevant to the design scope. As a part of contextual design, contextual inquiry is design process to collect data about users in the field which is for creating and prototyping product and service concepts.

  13. Timothy Young

    Ethnography presents the broadest overview of individuals and their needs, often encompassing entire cultures. Ethnography’s general broadness does a good job of giving an overview about behavior and how larger groups may interact with one another and their surroundings. This broad scope of behavior can provide the foundation to start generating questions that can be asked for a design issue, which then can be transferred to contextual inquiry.

    Through contextual inquiry, a researcher can begin to find more insight about the behavior of individuals, and really begin generating specific and key questions that can be used to guide a design. Contextual inquiry can also reveal practices from individuals that are not consciously executed, and can be valuable to the researcher to design into the product in a more profound manner.

    When new questions arise from the initial design, design ethnography will provide a method to guide the iterative process in which one can redesign based around new issues or needs that arise. Design ethnography should eventually build upon the previous two methods to find out what elements ultimately best fit the user and the situation at hand.

  14. XIaoyue Xiao

    Similarities:
    Ethnography, contextual inquiry and design ethnography are all methods to figure out what the stakeholders’ requirements are. These methods need investigation, observation, interaction and conclusion. The outputs of these methods all depend on culture, environment and custom, etc. Which means, the results or requirements could totally different if objects being observed vary.
    Differences:
    Ethnography seems focus on group and observation or survey from a general perspective, recording data and behavior of human when they interact with environment in detail. However, the intention of ethnography is to take an open-ended view, while contextual inquiry means to understand and to interpret the data gathered. And contextual inquiry aims to design a new product, whose goal is quite clear. Besides, the users are experts in contextual inquiry and are encouraged to lead the investigation. So, the observers here in contextual inquiry are some kind of not passive and need to know their focus and do assumption about the situation. Nevertheless, the observers in ethnography do not have to make sense what possible results or data would be collected before they begin to investigate. When comes to the design ethnography, people pay more attention on design and try to solve the problems during producing and improve the existing product as well.
    When to use:
    Ethnography is used to collect the requirements of a group of users who have different background such as nationality, education, age, etc. Contextual inquiry is used on people who have experience or knowledge of the new system and can provide valuable advice. Design ethnography is used when the product need a better scenario or runs into a troublesome situat

  15. Chunzi Zheng

    Ethnography, contextual inquiry, and design ethnography are methods focus on the same topic: the user behavior in context, and the reality of his work culture and practice. They all need the researchers to collect data from detailed observation of real interactions.

    However, the aim of the ethnographer is to understand the situation from a specific cultural framework rather than to enter into the situation and see things from the user’s eyes. The contextual inquiry is an approach rooted in practice, and the intention is to understand and interpret the data gathered, and then to design a new system. And the design ethnography is a method used in the design process.

    The ethnography study is open-ended, so sometimes it is more inspired than the contextual inquiry. Since the ethnography study need a lot of time and efforts, I think the ethnography methods can be used when there are enough money and time to do so. The contextual inquiry is suited to the detail design of a product because it can help designer figure out the user’s feelings about the current design.

  16. Chandra Bhavanasi

    All the three methods are qualitative research methods to study human behaviour, and can be used to design, invent and implement new products.
    Ethnography studies more of the dynamics, relationships and cultural aspects of people. Ethnographic research is generally done in a more natural environment than a formal research setting. Ethnography gives greater insights on how people make sense of their world, and often cultural norms influence design decisions. I think ET makes more compelling products. Contextual Inquiry on the other hand, is generally done in the setting of the participant and is mostly 1×1. It generally involves in asking a set of standard questions and observed and questioned while they work in their own environments. It is a mix of interview and observation. It involves observing people doing their tasks and having them talk about why they are doing while they are doing.

  17. Yao

    The ideas of Ethnography, Contextual Inquiry, and Design Ethnography are about observing and gaining our understanding on the behavior of people. Instead of sitting in the chair thinking or imagining the activities of people, these methods encourage us to interact with the world and experience the context of people. What these methods emphasize is the mutual relationship: the observer gets involved in the activities of people, and people participate in the construction of the observer’s understanding. By interacting with people, we know how to include their experience to decide the design requirements that could meet users’ needs. Besides, designers could reach a consensus more easily since there might be some ideas and concepts that could only be shared and understood by experiencing.

    However, there are still some differences among these methods. Ethnography tends to be a method that could be applied to some open problems, like the patterns of a society or cultural analysis. It is like that we pretend to have no knowledge of the world, so the more we observe, the clearer understanding we will have. Design Ethnography is like a live practice of Ethnography and it serves as a reference for designers to check, like what approaches could be applied or what principles should we hold during the design process. As for Contextual Inquiry, I feel it is more like a standard operating procedure. It provides more specific techniques for designers to use so they can always get information that is useful to the design.

    I think Ethnography methods could be applied in large-scaled studies or research problems that might take a long period of time. The result we will get in Ethnography methods might be very informative and could be interpreted differently by various aspects. But for more specific problems, Contextual Inquiry might be better to use because of its clear principles and guidelines. As a result, I think Contextual Inquiry might be the best model for enterprise design to be agile and productive.

  18. Pushkar Gopalakrishna

    Ethnography is a qualitative description of the human social condition, which is based on observation and fieldwork. Ethnography, contextual inquiry and design ethnography are 3 of the research methods used to generate ethnographic data by using techniques like user observation (which could be passive where the ethnographers become transparent to the users and active, where users actively participate in the interaction and observe the system), interviews etc.

    The main similarity between ethnography, contextual inquiry and design ethnography is that they all try to understand the working of the system and the interaction of the user with the system in its natural surroundings and then try to formulate the requirements of the system. This helps in collecting unbiased data about the system and the way in which the users interact with the system. It also makes sure that nuances of product usage are completely understood, which might be inadvertently missed when a user describes a system.

    The main difference between the 3 methods is the extent to which the ethnographers are involved or participate in the natural environment of the system when the users interact with it. In contextual inquiry, the ethnographers are involved more actively. They can observe the real functioning of the system and can even participate in the environment. This helps in completely understanding the usage of the system. But design ethnography follows a more passive observation.

    I agree with Xinlu’s view that there are some limitations to contextual inquiry and that it cannot be used in all kinds of systems, such as flight and communication. In this case I feel a more passive observation of the system is better.

  19. Anirudh

    Ethnography – It is the process of performing qualitative research. The methods employed can be surveys, user research & planning the process of observation, video-taping, interviews or manual recording of events.

    Contextual Inquiry – This is also a process of performing qualitative research. It usually employs interviewing the user. Interview is usually structured as an one-on-one interaction in which the researcher watches the user do their normal activities and discusses what they see with the user.

    Design Ethnography – It is a specific instance of ethnomethodology which, aims at documenting the methods and practices which the users use to understand their environment/system. In Design Ethnography the researcher collects set of data and analyzes perspectives, assumptions & skills that can be used effectively and efficiently to understand a particular environment, or domain, of people. This data can be used for designing new products.

    Similarities:

    All the methods are an attempt at qualitative analysis of the environment/context that has been set out as the goal for exploration.

    All the methods tend to be holistic and try to gather as much information as possible & then inferring from the collected data.

    Difference:

    The method of observation is different in all the approaches. Ethnography attempts to be non-intrusive whereas Contextual inquiry is intrusive & employs direct technique such as interviewing.

    Another difference is in the way users/participants are involved in the feedback mechanism or the evaluation. Ethnographer attempts to explore the user-system interaction with minimal intervention and by keeping the participants in the dark about his/her inquiry, the goal of the inquiry, results of the inquiry. Contextual inquiry is the of opposite Ethnography or rather complements Ethnography as it allows the inquirer to interact with the participant. It allows the inquirer to collaborate with the participant(s) to share the results, draw inferences & driving the inquiry towards specific goals.

    Yet another divergence in the methods is in the quality of information generated by the methods. Ethnography might not produce realistic data as it is prone to interpretation & bias of the researcher. This has been illustrated in “Reading & interpreting ethnography, Dourish” when the author quotes Marilyn Strathern and explains how “Interpretations & reinterpretations are the root cause of more data being generated”. Contextual Inquiry on the other hand attempts to get closer to the goal by involving the user.

    Opinions:

    This said, in my opinion all these methods are needed to understand user’ goal, user-interaction & the system. As each one has an advantage, ethnography gives unbiased view while contextual inquiry gives user+researcher view (which can have some bias).

    Also, in my opinion, plain qualitative research is not sufficient to explore a system/user-interaction as normal or routine actions performed by the user might not cover all possible states a system may end up in. To get a detailed picture of the system/user/user-system interaction we also need “white-box” research which attempts to reverse-engineer a system by analyzing interactions.

    According to me (also presented by others), ethnography is at the root of all these techniques & the methods employed are different based which which constraints are enforced/relaxed. Constraints can be mechanism of collecting data, researcher involvement, etc..

  20. Jacob Heller

    So what’s the difference between ethnography, contextual inquiry, and design ethnography? It seems to be mostly a matter of scope, and your choice to engage in the study of one or another would be dictated by the type of question you want to answer. From greatest scope to narrowest scope it would go: ethnograpy -> design ethnograpy -> contextual inquiry.

    All of these concepts are concerned with the desire to understand a culture that you aren’t familiar with. The word ‘culture’ is used liberally here – it could refer to a population in a different country with a different set of values or socioeconomic class. Or it could refer to a population down the street with a different set of values, or it could just refer to a workplace environment that you’re not familiar with.

    So ethnography is a very general term and as I was reading Dourish’s chapter it took me a moment to adjust and realize that this reading it for this class. Ethnography is very broad and simply concerned with understanding another culture, their customs and values. You would use this in any situation where you need to understand a culture.

    Design ethnography narrows the scope of ethnography to answer a question related specifically to product development. We’ll be doing this for our quarter-long group design project. If you ask a research question like “how can you design a better baby crib”, then your ethnographic population is mothers of infants and you’ll be asking research questions like “in what ways do mothers interact with their infants children”. You will be studying this ethnography with the intent of understanding their lives with respect to their babies.

    And the contextual inquiry takes the scope a few steps narrower. When asking the research question “in what ways do mothers interact with their infant children”, you must be aware of the context in which they interact. How high up does the crib sit? Is the mother sitting or standing? Is the crib in the living room, in the mother’s room or in the baby’s own room? You are now inquiring about the context of the interaction.

  21. Ishita

    Ethnography, contextual inquiry and design ethnography are similar in the sense that they are all human-centered qualitative research methodologies. The primary objective is – to discover what people actually do, the reason that they give for doing it, and how they feel while doing it, by observing them in their natural environment rather than in a formal research setting.

    The difference however, lies in their end goals, levels of observation and scope of consideration. Ethnography takes a holistic approach towards gathering data and generalized results are drawn out of them. Contextual inquiry, as the name suggests is more focused and deals with a specific context. The user plays an active role in the data collection and interpretation. Design ethnography is more like applying ethnography techniques to solve design related issues. Emphasis is on the effects of design on people and culture.

    Depending upon the intention of observer, availability and accessibility of stakeholders, time and the nature of problem, one of the methods is chosen.

  22. Jared Young

    All methods involve sampling from users of a relevant community- whether it be the targeted user group of a
    newly designed product or a foreign community. Up-close and personal experiences and interaction with the subjects
    are crucial to each of these methods. There is a goal of understanding the needs and requirements of
    the user group and to define and understand the relationships they hold.

    In Ethnography, attention is brought to what the ethnographer or researcher might see, hear or feel. Focus
    is directed to the self, which is thought of as an ‘instrument of knowing’. It seems as if an ethnographer
    is more immersed in the habitat or surrounding of a user group that they study; they try to place themselves in
    the shoes of the user group and to grasp the user experiences firsthand. Contextual inquiry deals more with
    acquiring qualitative data from the user group using a structured interview. The idea of observing the user
    group in their own habitat or relevant environment is maintained. However, a researcher using contextual inquiry
    may not be as immersed as an ethnographer. Observations are made by the interviewer, and relevant questions are asked.
    In the end, the interview will interpret the gathered facts from the user’s answers, their observed behaviors
    and the surrounding environment.

    Design ethnography has a focus of using ethnographic work/applying ethnography to support the design agenda of
    creating technology, tools, and products. Connections between ethnography and design must be made, and
    one way to provide structure and organization for designers is to use tools such as models, scenarios and
    prototypes, etc. This work has expanded in providing insights to inform design innovations and decisions made
    for products, experiences, services, processes, business strategies, and ultimately to solve real-world problems.

    I would use design ethnography for many of the design questions posed in class. Questions that solve problems
    and address practical issues where users need to be understood. I would use ethnography to understand cultural norms
    that are different from our own. Contextual inquiry could also be useful in supporting the design of a system
    or product that addresses a practical issue and could be used alongside or be a useful alternative to design
    ethnography. This may prove more useful when the designer has a focus area in which the interview questions are targeted
    and may be more relevant to the design.

  23. Jeffrey

    Ethnography, contextual inquiry, design ethnography are all qualitative research methods that aim to gather detailed information in the environment and context a user functions.

    Ethnography involves in-depth recordings of the interactions occurring between people and their environments. It generally focuses on social relationships and how such relationships may affect the nature of work. As opposed to contextual inquiry, ethnographers do not actively enter into a situation. Rather, ethnographers try to take an unbiased and open-ended view of the situation.

    Contextual inquiry is a more practical approach derived from traditional ethnography; it is a user-centered design ethnographic research method. It differs from traditional ethnography studies in which contextual inquiry involves understanding and interpreting data gathered. Additionally, investigators are required to acknowledge and challenge their subject of interest. For example, interviews are performed in the workplace so objects, artifacts, and relationships of the work can be better understood. Users are considered as experts in the workplace and are often encouraged to lead such investigations; however, this does not mean the researchers must be passive observers. Researchers are also encouraged to gain a shared comprehension of how any work happens by questioning the significance of things and offering interpretations of what the researcher observes. The explicit aim of contextual inquiry is to design a new system, whereas in traditional ethnographic studies, it would be more open ended.

    Design ethnography allows ethnography to be applied real world design questions/ the design process, allowing researchers to better understand users and develop novel solutions to current design problems.

  24. Karen

    All of these techniques are person-focused (they have the goal of understanding the person and his/her goals/needs/wants/behaviors). They all are data-driven and include qualitative components, such as observations and interviews. All are, I believe, helpful in design. However, the 3 differ in the types of questions they ask, the way they ask the questions, and their usefulness in different contexts.

    Ethnography is immersive (and design ethnography can be too)–the researcher participates as one of the “subjects” and the line between the observer and the participant is thus blurred. Culture and contexts are of utmost importance in ethnographic research, as the focus of research is on subjective experiences and meaning, as researchers attempt to describe a group of people and understand what they do, how they do it, and why they do it. This technique can be useful in understanding how designs fit in a broader context. I believe that this approach may be the most useful at the very beginning processes of design–that is, brainstorming and coming up with design ideas, since there is no clear cut goal when using this approach, but to carefully see.

    Contextual inquiry asks a much more specific question: How does this group of people do work, and what do they want and need when it comes to doing work? The goal of contextual inquiry is to design new software and hardware using this information. Unlike in ethnography, researches using this approach do not take the role of an insider, that is, they do not attempt to “be” their customer. This technique is particularly useful for designing new systems for a very specific purpose and clientele, as it rather focused in scope.

    Design ethnography is similar to ethnography, only it “harnesses” the information from ethnographic research into opportunities for design. Ethnography itself lays out the methods for gathering data, but does not address what to do with the information. This method is particularly important in light of the expanding global market–understanding culture and context is crucial when bringing designs from one country to another. I recall some very interesting (but informed!) differences in design when I traveled to Asia last year. Research suggested that Asians like things in a long cylandrical form–so we see Oreos in Asia that are long and straw-like rather than round cookies. The phones there are also long flip-phones. Following this, I believe that design ethnography is useful for revising current designs for use in different contexts, including different cultures.

  25. Ramraj

    Ethnography evolved from several decades. It first started with anthropology and evolved as major subjects over the decades. Ethnography is very open ended and it is broad. It is mostly into understanding cultures, people values and their geographic conditions. It is more into understanding people surroundings. This can be used whenever there is need to understand culture and it can be applied to any scenario irrespective of the geographical location. The similarity among ethnography, contextual enquiry and design ethnography is that they try to understand the surroundings through collecting data that is through surveys, forms, interview etc.
    I agree with Anirudh that the main difference between ethnography, contextual enquiry and design ethnography is that method of observation is different.

  26. Jianlin

    These three concepts are intertwined to some extent. If we need to distinguish them, I would consider ethnography is a more general approach. Ethnography design is the design process which adopts ethnograph methods. Context inquiry is just part of ethnography. However, I don’t think there is need to arbitarily differentiate them. As they are intertwined with each other rather than separated methods or concepts, people often stand in the middle. For example, in some way, people who do ethnography studies are alsoattempt to provide design ideas. Though Poul also criticized about this trend, I still think that people doing things in this way indicates that there is a need in fact. Why we need to clearly draw a border line between them? Why not digest them all together. If we investigate these concepts from a historical view as Poul did, the concepts are developed from borrowing the ideas across the domains. Although some new ideas are proposed and specified, the underline principles are very similar. When we do interviews, observations, interpretations, the rules that we need to follow are almost the same.
    I am glad to read how people summarize their experiences. The ideas are helpful to get starters warm up.

  27. Dakuo

    Ethnography, contextual inquiry and ethnography design ethnography, all of these three are user oriented research design method. The three methods all require researcher to closely observe users working or living context in data collection process. The information produced by those three methods is quite reliable since researchers get direct contact with users.
    The differences of these three methods are distinguished. Ethnography is quite open-ended and unstructured. Basically it requires researchers honestly record all the data, without any assumption, to reflect the reality of a culture background. Contextual inquiry usually requires observers get involve into users’ normal working context. And observers interrupt users, interview users, question users and record data. It’s usually structured because this method serves researcher’s intention. Researchers use this method aim to answer some specific questions. The ethnography design is similar to contextual inquiry in respect of structured, and serving researcher’s specific need. It has focus reflecting researchers’ interest. It is also similar to ethnography and is different from contextual inquiry in respect of lacking observer deep involvement in the process. Observers play a role out of game to purely record what they observed.

  28. Jinelle D'souza

    Ethnography, contextual inquiry and design ethnography are all concerned with the researcher/designer going to the user to observe him because what people say is not always what they do. Ethnography is a research method based on observing people in their natural environment rather than in a formal research setting. The aim of design in this case is open ended, thereby leaving the possibilities limitless. Ethnographic inquiry requires the observer to take a more passive role in observing his subjects than he would in contextual inquiry. His goal is to understand a social setting from the point of view of his subjects, so it is important that he writes down what he sees without interjecting his own point of view.

    In design ethnography, in contrast, the designer considers the requirements more pointedly, thereby approaching the context with predefined designated goals.

    Contexual inquiry is as a user centered ethnography method. The final aim is his case is to design a new system. The objects and environment the user interacts with are just as important. Contextual inquiry allows for a more active role by the observer by allowing the observer to discuss what he sees with his subjects and to ask questions.

    I would say that ethnography can be used when there is ample time and the design end is open-ended. Contexual inquiry can be used when we wish to find out the users unmet needs, the potentials problems and solutions, interactions etc. Design ethnography can be used when the designer has in mind a particular objective and has a short time span to achieve it.

  29. Shih Chieh Lee

    An ethnography, a contextual inquiry, and a design ethnography are all resource-intensive, which can be used as qualitative methods in user design project to solve problems of human-computer interaction. While an ethnography is subject and empirical, a contextual inquiry is more reliable with its surveys and questionnaires. Furthermore, the user in a contextual inquiry was observed through a arranged process, but for an ethnography, the user is accompanied undisturbedly and seamlessly by the researchers.
    When we are taught how to distinguish the world, we are taught the others’ experiences. That’s the main concept of an ethnography, figuring out the experiences based on the meanings of gathered texts. In other words, an ethnography is the method of exploring another world by the texts. However, it’s not about the texts, or data, you collected but what you learned with the data, which could lead you to design. Hence, while an ethnography and a contextual inquiry are both qualitative, an ethnography is quite different from a contextual inquiry, which is focusing on the data, or information we get, and could be done within one-to-one interaction and in hours or days. As for a design ethnography, it’s based on the spirit of ethnography, emphasizing on the experiences between the lines, but more practical and aiming at the designing process.

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