From Ethnographic Probe to Technology Probe

At this time of writing, we have received information from our ethnographic probes from four of our participant families. The more interactive probes are still with two of the families and we are actively recruiting a further two families.

‘Cheers’

Our encounter with our first family, a husband and wife with a young child, the husband being the mobile worker who travels extensively in the United Kingdom revealed shared pleasures and frustrations during periods of separation. This family shared their pleasure in socializing together through drinking (figure 7), and the frustration on being separated of not being able to ‘drink together’, especially when the mobile worker is away and has the opportunity to be more ‘social’ whilst the partner takes care of the home and their young child. For this family our technology probe has, from insights gained from the couple’s sense of humour and playfulness, sought to bring them together whilst apart.

Under the working title ‘Cheers’ the technology probe comprises a bottle opener that will be used by the mobile worker within his own quotidian ritual of having a drink after work, send a signal to the family home to be picked up by a unit to dispense a glass of wine to the partner (figure 8).

Figure 7. Montage of ethnographic ‘like/dislike’ photos from family 1. Photo Credit: Family Rituals 2.0

Figure 8. ‘Cheers’ technology probe development and prototype. Photo Credit Yurman & Chatting, 2014

This probe is currently in the final stages of testing and will deployed to the family to live with them for a period coinciding with the mobile workers absence from the family home.

‘Anticipation’

Our second family comprised of a same sex couple of which one travelled frequently abroad for work purposes. Family two had a specific sense of design, which suggested a modernist aesthetic; their flat was orderly and displayed a preference for co-ordinating monochrome decoration. When asked what they disliked about their flat they were quite taken aback and initially responded that there was nothing in there they disliked. On further reflection they did reveal elements they were not entirely pleased with. Interestingly, their periods of separation revealed an anticipation of being reunited and doing so through a trip away from the family home that they would take together.

For family two we have taken ‘anticipation’ as the trope from which to focus the technology probe. This will be reminiscent of a airport departure board but will display a countdown until the family are reunited and take their own trip away. This countdown will also be conveyed to the mobile worker through his mobile phone (figure 9).

Figure 9. ‘Anticipation’ technology probe development and suggested placing in the home. Photo Credit Yurman & Chatting, 2014

REFLECTIONS TOWARDS A CONCLUSION

As this work is currently ongoing, it would be somewhat premature to make conclusions at this stage. The aim of the research has been to understand the nature of quotidian family rituals for mobile workers and the role digital technologies can and do play. It is worth noting that all the families so far involved in the design work have access to smartphones and regularly use social networking and Skype to keep in touch.

Each family has revealed a specific family life and prominent characteristics based around the movements of the mobile worker and their specific family unit (with young children, with older children, with no children). The ethnographic probes have sought to reveal the family’s attitude to separation – is it an opportunity to do things they don’t do together or is it disruption of family life? Each family involved in the project will receive a bespoke design based on the creative information collected from the ethnographic probes, which may reveal new patterns of communication. The technology probes are not conceived as solutions, rather they are tools to help the research bring materiality to themes, insights and patterns that may lie dormant within the families of mobile workers.

The ethnography of not being there also highlights the difficulty of undertaking research within the private space of the family. The research investigators have extensive experience of working in ethnographic research, often in sensitive and highly personal areas (Bichard’s work on personal experience of toileting, Marouda’s work in perceptions of death), yet have found the sanctity of the family and the privacy of the home hard to penetrate. The project does offer ‘incentives’³ for taking part, but has not proved an incentive against valuable and sometimes limited family time. For the research team this has proved problematic given the timeframes in which the research and design development has been set to take place, under the stringent guidelines and timetables of UK Research Council funding.

To collect information in the absence of the ethnographer we have re-focused cultural probes to act as ethnographic probes that serve two functions; firstly to collect data on the everyday activities of the families including emotional aspects. Secondly, to provide that data in a form that can be used creatively by the design researchers, from product and interactive design, within the team. These have proved invaluable in achieving a research methodology that has proved to be difficult to negotiate, whilst also providing useful insights that might not have been revealed in the standard participant observation method.

Jo-Anne Bichard is a Senior Research Fellow at the Royal College of Art and leader of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design’s Work and City Lab. She works with designers in creating ethnographic encounters for participatory design, lectures on Design Anthropology and is completing a PhD in Architectural Studies. Jo-anne.bichard@rca.ac.uk

Paulina Yurman is a Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design Research Associate on the Family Rituals 2.0 project. She is a designer / researcher, and is currently undertaking a PhD in Design at Goldsmiths College that explores design speculations in the material world of parenthood. Paulina.yurman@network.rca.ac.uk

David Kirk is Senior Lecturer in Experience-Centred Design, at Newcastle University’s Culture Lab. He is Principal Investigator of Family Rituals 2.0 and holds a PhD in Computer Science. His research focuses on interactions between people, digital technologies and the environments, and designing new kinds of interactive computational technologies and services.

David Chatting is a Research Associate at Newcastle University’s Culture Lab. He is a designer and technologist, who is interested in the “mundane future”; working in software and hardware, to explore the impact of emerging technologies in everyday lives. David.Chatting@ncl.ac.uk

2014 Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings, ISSN 1559-8918. © American Anthropological Association and Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference, some rights reserved.

NOTES

¹ Creativity Greenhouse was itself a research project run by the University of Nottingham, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), which aimed to explore the use of virtual reality technologies for supporting research funding ‘sandpit’ meetings. A virtual reality environment similar in principle to Second-Life, enabled researchers to take part in a set of exercises to help define project ideas, pull together research teams and to make funding pitches. This was all played out virtually by our avatars in a digital space and a series of digital breakout and private rooms for closer collaborative discussions.

² We are grateful for the support of the EPSRC grant number EP/K025678/1 in this research as well as that of our Family Rituals 2.0 colleagues; Professor Adele Ladkin, Dr Juliet Jain, Dr William Clayton and Dr Marina Marouda.

³ We offer our participants vouchers from a store of their choice and to a value of £100 for taking part in the project.