CONCLUSION: WHICH ETHNOGRAPHY WHEN?

Given the differences between the ethnographic approaches produced in this study the question of their relative qualities naturally arises. The answer naturally depends on the reasons for commissioning ethnographic work. In the case at hand, with a short time frame for fieldwork and improvement agenda the Interaction Design approach and its’ focus on actionable insights was the most helpful. However, as pointed out by Norman (2010), a user-centered design approach to ethnography is more likely to produce improvements to the existing situation, rather than bold transformation.

Keeping the focus on doing ethnography for applied purposes, the depth of the (social) anthropological approach provides insights which can drive long-term innovative change processes. The ethnography produced provides a rich description of the topics at hand, but without offering suggestions for how these descriptions can be lead to changes which will improve visitor satisfaction of the fair.

The Mobile Ethnography approach shows a lot of potential for ethnographic work where the object of study is more permanent than a weekend long fair. The material gathered by the visitors could provide great context to anthropological as well as design ethnographies which have a change agenda. By using myServiceFellow or similar apps for benchmarking, ethnographers can improve their possibilities to find the most rewarding focus for their ethnographies from their employers’ perspective. The Interaction Design approach would be aided in so far that it can remove some of the openness in the approach and be able to go deeper into the informants’ worlds whereas Social Anthropologists will be aided in specifying areas of studies which can produce more applicable ethnographies. We believe that the gap between ethnography for Interaction Design and Social Anthropological approaches will be lessened with the help of Mobile Ethnography. The study shows that to use a mixture of the approaches, if possible, gives the broadest amount of actionable insights.

To use an example based on insights from the study; several participants who used myServiceFellow commented on the number of people at the fair. Depending on the time of their visit some thought it was too crowded and some too few. Closely related, one of the social anthropologists (Karlsson, 2012) noticed that her informants avoided overcrowded market stands and found support in previous anthropological work on the amount of personal space needed to make people feel comfortable in shopping. Put together this gives us insights into the importance of trying to “even out” the amount of people visiting the fair at any given time to increase both the enjoyment of the fair for the visitors, and the likelihood of them buying anything from the stands. We also noticed that the most appreciated part of the advent fair – in the data retrieved via myServiceFellow – were mini-events (like dancing around the Christmas tree). Furthermore with the help of the time-stamps from the touchpoint data we could actually confirm that there was higher attendance at the fair during the hours where events were scheduled. By adding more events, or spreading out the existing events over time, we could thus improve both the visitor experience and the stand holder’s income. Concepts coming from the interaction designers included suggestions for how to make people more aware of scheduled events, based on their learning that most people did not know in advance when events were due to be held (even though these were a highlight of the advent fair for them).

In conclusion, this paper has described a study on how three (self-described) styles of ethnography led to different types of findings whilst studying the same advent fair. The study results give empirical support to previous papers by van Veggel (2006) and Tunstall (2008). Furthermore, the study shows how the theoretical starting points of the three ethnographic styles affect what will be presented as the outcome, and how that outcome is achieved.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The research presented in this paper was made possible through funding by European Union research project “Service Design as an approach to foster competitiveness and sustainability of European tourism”. The paper has benefitted through insightful comments from Stokes Jones, Mattias Arvola and the anonymous reviewers. Finally the authors wish to thank Hanna Karlsson, Mikaela Nyman, Olof Jönsson, Thea Dahlqvist, Jeanette Bendelin, Charlotte Isaksson, Daniel Ros and Sofia Klasson for their efforts in the project as well as Björn Alm for mentoring the social anthropologists.

Fabian Segelström is currently pursuing his PhD at Linköping University, working in the Interaction and Service Design research group. His research focus is on how designers create an understanding for those they design for, and how they use and communicate this understanding once it has been achieved.

Stefan Holmlid is associate professor at Linkoping University and heads the Interaction and Service Design research group. He is a cofounder of the International Service Design Network and the Service Design and Service Innovation conference, ServDes. Currently his research circles around the expressive and inclusive powers of design methods and techniques in the service sector.

Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings 2012, pp. 48–62. © American Anthropological Association, some rights reserved.

NOTES

¹ Personas/user profiles are a popular tool in design to create a number of prototypical users of whatever is being designed. They are used as an inspirational summary of research.

² A closed beta version was used in this study.

³ The exact meaning of the term is autoethnography is still being discussed in the ethnography community. For the purposes of this paper it is understood as any effort to collect ethnographic data where no external ethnographer is present. Also see Solomon (2010) for a comment on this discussion.