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METHODOLOGY
Seeking to critically understand the role of quotidian ritual in domestic and family life, the research has centered on understanding the ways in which ritual behaviour is impacted and other wise affected by digital technology. How do quotidian rituals accommodate work life balance and how can digital technologies be used to overcome barriers of engagement in domestic life when constrained by work-commitments? The research has been designed with adherence to value-centred technology design (Borning and Muller, 2012), which combines social science and design led methodologies, to explore the values held by participants in domestic ritual activity. The key ethnographic methods incorporated into the research include interviews, diary studies and participant observation combined with design led methods such as ‘Cultural Probes’ (Gaver et al, 1999).
The values held by participants and distilled from the field research are then used to develop (potentially low-fi) technology probes. These are bespoke artifacts, each created in response to the rituals identified within participants’ families. These probes present the opportunity to be used reflexively to explore socio-technical relationships in our participating families, both in the role of ritual in family life and the impact technology has with regards to understanding of work/life balance.
The project includes a number of work streams incorporating a literature review, interdisciplinary research design including ethical considerations and recruitment timetables, a catalogue of existing technologies, stakeholder and family interviews, ethnographic case studies and design and technology probes. Each work stream has been designed to adhere to a timeline that incorporates traditional elements of academic research (including researcher training), participant recruitment, ethnographic design data analysis and build of the probes and prototypes.
AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF NOT BEING THERE; THE RESEARCHER
Initially the research design was devised to recruit 30 families for in-depth interviews, with the aim of recruiting six of the thirty to take part in deeper ethnographic studies that incorporated design led methodologies (figure 1).
Figure 1. Family Rituals 2.0 Research Design. Jain et al, Family Rituals 2.0 2013
Access to families to take part in the interviews and ethnographic elements of the project would be gained from a series of 20 stakeholder interviews with employers in relevant ‘mobile worker’ sectors such as hotel, construction and technology industries. Yet, it soon became apparent that a number of barriers to conducting the research would have to be overcome. Firstly, the stakeholders as ‘gatekeepers’ to mobile employees showed reluctance to allow researchers to access potential participants. Whilst happy to discuss the issue of work/life balance from an organisational perspective, granting access to wider organisation members became problematic. As this access was set within a fixed schedule of research it became central to the research team that ‘other’ recruitment opportunities were explored. Secondly, as we gradually recruited families for the initial in-depth interviews, it also became apparent that scheduling these encounters would be difficult within the mobile workers time commitments. This became a major issue for the project in which the methodology had sought to conduct in-depth interviews with families of whom a few would take part in the ethnographic and design lead research that would be undertaken when all family members were present as well as in periods of seperation. Having realised this form of ‘snowballing’ for recruiting research participants would not work in the set time frame of the project, especially when considering the design time required for the bespoke technology development, the research team felt there was no option but to recruit for our own specific work programmes.
From Cultural Probe to Ethnographic Probe
With the recruitment for the project now split between work programmes, the design research team from the Royal College of Art and Newcastle University explored a number of mobile worker networks to recruit families to take part in the project. We conducted a series of interviews with 10 mobile workers to gain an understanding of their domestic and work life schedules as well as with the aim to recruit six to take place in the deeper ethnographic engagement. Initially, we had planned a key ethnographic encounter around a form of participant observation with the researcher being present in a key family ritual, a Sunday lunch, or if within the time frame of the research, a birthday or other such event which the family observed. However, the interviews revealed that after periods of separation, family time together was private and that allowing the researchers ‘into this private space would be a sacrifice difficult to justify’ (Yurman et al, 2014). From these 10 interviews, two families agreed to take part in the design led portions of the research, albeit without the presence of the design ethnographer and the participant observation element.
This presented a fresh challenge to the design team, how does design led ethnography collect data when the ethnographer is not present? And for that matter should design-ethnographers concern themselves with the kinds of engagement that more traditional ethnographers hold as critical to their practice. Afterall, researchers have been suggesting for many years that as designers we should not uncritically adopt the methods and agendas of the social sciences (Anderson, 1994). Perhaps therefore, a more designerly way of ethnographically engaging with the field-site could be found.
Either way, the research design had specified that we would initially deploy ‘cultural probes’ to sensitise the design team to the design space of family life. Cultural Probes were developed by Gaver et al (1999) for the collection of ‘inspirational data… to stimulate imagination rather then define a set of problems’ for designers (ibid,1999; 25). The probes consist of packages that may include maps, disposable cameras and other materials that have been designed ‘to provoke inspirational responses’ (ibid, 1999; 22) from research participants. They are left behind and completed in the absence of the design researcher. They help designers understand the participant’s culture, and to help create design outcomes that are not ‘irrelevant or arrogant’ (ibid, 1999; 23), whilst also not constraining designers to briefs focused specifically on needs. Cultural probes aim to lead a discussion with research participants ‘towards unexpected ideas’ but not dominate the discussion (ibid, 1999; 23).
For the Family Rituals 2.0 design led research it was suggested that the cultural probes might be effectively redirected to become more ethnographic-like probes. This suggested that the kinds of information that they derived might move beyond the purely inspirational and aesthetic but give some insight as to routines and practices enacted by our participants. This required their acting in absentia of the ethnographer to capture both elements of the mobile workers’ time away from home and of family life when they are away and reunited. The design of the probes for the mobile workers had to adhere to a number of specifics. The probes had to be portable and not contravene any baggage restriction for travel outside of the UK (i.e. involve liquids, flammables etc.), and were directed at exploring three phases of family life;
- What a family’s life is like when they are together
- What life is like for the mobile worker when they are away
- What life at home is like with an absent family member
Exploring the first two points has been undertaken using our ethnographic probes consisting of a booklet with specific questions (figure 2), a list of photographs we would like them to take, a list of house rules and a like /dislike stamp with post-it notes so that they can identify items around the home that they like or dislike (figure 3).
Figures 2 & 3. Booklets for the mobile workers to fill in when away from home and Like / Dislike probe. Photo Credit: Kirk, Family Rituals 2.0, 2014
By identifying items in the home, the research team are given a glimpse into the relations family members have with material objects in the home, their aesthetic sensibilities and a sense of what may be acceptable and unacceptable for the design of the technology probes. This is a key factor as it is important that the technology probes are accepted within the family and used within the research programme. To not consider the wider material artifacts in which the probe will be placed risks its rejection by the users.
The third point focusing around life at home without the family member/mobile worker has been more speculative in the design of the ethnographic probe. To gather this information the design team created a more interactive probe, which displays questions to the family when the mobile worker is away. The questions require written responses that the family write down and deposit in the probe and that are then collected when the absent family member returns. There is also an option for the answers to be e-mailed to the design team.
The shape and character of the probe has been changed throughout the project (figure 4), offering a range of interactive behaviours; from the obvious and predictable to ones more mysterious and random, in which messages may only be displayed for an hour, resulting in some being missed or ignored. The structural form factor changes, which are allowed by prototyping rapidly in low-fi materials such as cardboard, also allow the design team to experiment with the aesthetics of the probes allowing us to create objects which will resonate with participant’s sense of style. This increases acceptability of them as slightly intrusive objects in the home.
Figure 4. Interactive probes change of shape and character. Photo Credit: Kirk, Family Rituals 2.0, 2014
The interactive probes have allowed the researchers to ‘poke’ into the way families might respond to technology, their perceptions of its acceptability, as well as experiment with ways to elicit participant responses. The interactive probes offer a more reflexive lens in to family life than the traditional cultural probes, and allow the design team to respond to emerging events in the world or within families to help foster a more reactive relationship with participants. This helps to build trust and empathy between the family and the design team and increases the participating families’ sense of intrigue in participation around the notion of engaging with a new critical technology during the later technology probe phase.
A second ethnographic probe has also been developed to explore family life whilst the mobile worker is away. This probe focuses on a ‘geography of emotion and activities’. Island and lake shaped cards along with a gridded blue poster were given to families to fill in based on the feelings and activities at home. Family members assigned emotions experienced and activities undertaken to the cards, which where then placed on the poster creating a family map of family life when the mobile worker is absent (figure 5). In addition each family member is asked to place a representation of themselves (by using a toy piece) and note their co-ordinates in the map. Here there were records of family members being in ‘the island of boredom’ at the beginning of the day but in the land of ‘tea by the sofa whilst waiting for potatoes to boil’ at the end of the day. This activity provides the research team with fragments of information about their disposition, the values that they place in everyday activities, as well as a sense of the families’ attitudes to ambiguous open tasks, their creative input, emotional vocabulary, and the broader routines of family activities and quotidian rituals of their domestic lives.
Figure 5. Ethnographic probe into the ‘geographies of emotions or activities’. Photo Credit: Yurman, Family Rituals 2.0, 2014
AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF NOT BEING THERE; THE FAMILY
The ethnographic probes serve to act in absentia of the design ethnographer by collecting information that serves as creative inspiration for the design team, but also provide the research with an understanding of how to engage the families taking part in the study and what they find stimulating to do. Understanding these contexts has informed the design of the technology probes. Our initial findings suggest that regular separation and reunion can create a form of elastic distancing and approximation of home life that offers family members periods of reflection and an opportunity to see family life with a fresh perspective. Given the continued periods of time away from family life for the mobile worker, such reflection takes place at regular intervals. Whilst certain aspects of family life are reflected upon, there is also acceptance that some significant events are missed, but that separation can offer opportunities to arrange key family rituals that may be difficult to do when the family is consistently together.
We also noted distinct rhythms of family life dependent on the length or frequency of absence of the mobile worker (figure 6). These cycles involved; preparing for separation, separation, preparing for re-union and re-union and re-adaptation to family life together, and appear more frequently for mobile workers who frequently travel, then those who travel less often but are away for longer periods of time. By mapping these rhythms the research highlights that, similarly with the complexity of defining ritual, the complexity of defining a mobile worker are equally tenuous, with distinct rhythms applied to each mobile worker and their family.
Figure 6. Rhythms of Mobile Worker and Family (Yurman et al, 2014).
There is also flexibility within these rhythms, with some mobile workers shifting from being away for short periods and then long periods. Creating a standard pattern and routine for some mobile workers maybe difficult and hence the quotidian rituals of family life may provide key anchors that allow for the elasticity of separation and reunion.
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Really enjoyed reading this. I love the design probes and hope you continue to share ongoing iterations.