households

Intelligences

Tutorial: Digital Ethnography in Domestic Spaces

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JENNY KENNEDY RMIT University ROWAN WILKEN RMIT University [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] [s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Please sign in or become an EPIC Member to access video. [/s2If] [s2If current_user_is(subscriber)] Become an EPIC Member to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] Overview This tutorial explores research in people’s homes through digital methods. The instructors focus on how to utilize participant’s existing digital skills and materials to undertake ethnographic research on and in their home environment, and develop a greater awareness of how geographical and socio-economic circumstances impact the research process. Participants collaborate to discuss how understanding of domestic contexts might frame our research design and specific methods, and consider ways for enhancing the collaborative and participatory process of data collection in the domestic space. This tutorial was presented in full at EPIC202020. The video includes...

Intelligences

Ethnography’s Role in Seeing the AI’s Blind Spots: Living amongst AI—Agency of the Household

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LAIYEE HO Delve PechaKucha Presentation Home automation has made big promises for utilizing intelligent technology to help the lives of everyday people, but the potential of the technology can only be as good as our understanding of the world we are trying to improve. In this PechaKucha, I share insights from my years of conducting ethnography in homes where families have lived alongside AI and automated technology. Our initial tries at intelligent technology in the home were modeled after our own assumptions, but it failed to account for the full variables of the ‘household’, which had an agency of its own. When technology has the potential to disrupt not only our workflows, but relationships between people in the home, it's the responsibility of technologists and ethnographers to provide the critical human perspective necessary for technology to live in harmony with people. LaiYee Ho is the co-founder of Delve (www.delvetool.com), where she pours her years of experience as a UX researcher and designer into creating...

Intelligences

Acknowledging Differences for Design: Tracing Values and Beliefs in Photo Use

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CONNOR GRAHAM and MARK ROUNCEFIELD [s2If is_user_logged_in()]Download PDF[/s2If] This paper explores links between ethnographic approaches, technology design and use and values and beliefs. We document recent empirical work on the use of photographs amongst Chinese families; pointing to some differences with previous empirical studies from predominantly Western cultures and tentatively linking Chinese photo work to rather broader cultural values that may develop some ‘sensitivities’ for design. For some time ethnography has been interested in ‘values’ in methodological approaches and concerns. The notion of ‘values’ is also repeatedly called upon in ethnographic studies of (technology for) the home. In this appeal these studies tellingly echo Peter Winch’s sentiments regarding how, in general, social life can be understood only through a understanding of beliefs. This paper documents and explicates photo work amongst Chinese families, linking the families’ own explanations and comments about these practices to much wider,...

Intelligences

Drawing from Negative Space: New Ways of Seeing Across the Client-Consultant Divide

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MICHELE FRANCES CHANG and MATTHEW LIPSON [s2If is_user_logged_in()]Download PDF[/s2If] Focusing on the client-consultant relationship, well honed, but perhaps overly so, this paper aims to shed light on the conditions that at once streamline and challenge our collaborations. To do so, we borrow a page from the visual arts; namely an experimental method of representation called negative space drawing. In both its aim (to create a picture from a new perspective) and challenge (to shake off the preconceived notions that limit us) drawing from negative space reflects a similar dynamic to our own. By way of a case study commissioned by one author and conducted by the other, we sketch a framework of negative space which examines our respective biases and agendas and our endeavors to resolve them.[s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Sign in or create a free account to access this content and over 400 articles—the leading collection of peer-reviewed work on ethnographic practice.[/s2If][s2If is_user_logged_in()] [s2If is_user_logged_in()] The purpose...

Intelligences

The Space Between Mine and Ours: Exploring the Subtle Spaces Between the Private and the Shared in India

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ASHWINI ASOKAN [s2If is_user_logged_in()]Download PDF[/s2If] Starting from their interactions within shared spaces and use of shared objects, to large social networks, the Indian society has developed a range of ways to incorporate subtle gestures and systems into their lives that neither forces them to share all their time and space with everyone, nor isolates them completely. This paper explores this idea that privacy is not always mutually exclusive from shared states. In the process, it highlights quality of time and space as a construct of subtle negotiations between the socially structured and personally desired. These subtleties allow Indians to design their lives around extensive grey spaces that exist in between the community and individual. This suggests some new ways for us to think about meaning of privacy, and its impact on how people in countries like India navigate complex social networks, cultural systems, and rigid social hierarchies, very often using technologies like phones and TVs.[s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Sign...

Intelligences

The Montage Workshop: The Recreation of Realization

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ASTRID SØNDERGAARD and JOHANNE MOSE ENTWISTLE [s2If is_user_logged_in()]Download PDF[/s2If] This paper argues that we need to rethink our way of representing ethnographic data within user driven innovation processes (hereafter UDI process) in order to ensure that the complex life worlds of users inform the entire technical development process. To ensure this we argue that:[s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Sign in or create a free account to access this content and over 400 articles—the leading collection of peer-reviewed work on ethnographic practice.[/s2If][s2If is_user_logged_in()] [s2If is_user_logged_in()] We need to re-create the process of realization of user complexity that the anthropologist goes through in the field and engage our technical partners in this ‘re-creation of realization’. To meet this challenge we have sought inspiration within filmmaking and based on the principles of filmic montage theory we have developed ‘the montage workshop’. This method challenges the way we handle and represent ethnographic...

Intelligences

Beyond Walking With Video: Co-creating Representation

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JONATHAN BEAN [s2If is_user_logged_in()]Download PDF[/s2If] This paper discusses a method I used to conduct a study of hygge, a Danish concept that is usually translated as “cosiness.” I wanted to learn more about hygge and how it related to technology in the home. The method I used builds on my experience with spatial ethnography, on Bruno Latour’s theory of representation, and on the work of visual anthropologist Sarah Pink. I asked participants to use a video or still camera to help me document their home. With participant and researcher both behind the lens of a camera, I saw a significant remapping of the power relationship between researcher and participant; we were able to focus together on the material home as the object of the research. In addition to reducing the time needed to build rapport, this method offers a way to analyze cultural practices such ashygge that are not entirely visible in the material world.[s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Sign in or create a free account to access this content and over 400 articles—the...