Research

An ethnographic approach to user experience: a bibliography
© Louise Ferguson, 2002

General field research
Ethnography
Participant observation
Covert observation
Workplace ethnography
Children
Informants
Interviewing
Questionnaires
Field notes
Discourse analysis
The Internet
Grounded theory
Focus groups
Ethnography in user requirements and design
Ethnography and HCI/CSCW
Ethnographies

General field research
Beyer, H. and Holtzblatt, K. (1998) Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centred Systems, London: Morgan Kaufmann
A discussion of methods for deciding "what to build and how what you build will affect all the other related activities". "Weaves techniques from Industrial engineering, anthropology, human factors, software design, and group process together". Written by individuals with considerable experience in product development.
Understanding the customer - seeing work - seeing across customers - innovation from data - system design - prototyping

Burgess, Robert G. (1982) Field Research: A Sourcebook and Field Manual, Routledge
A useful resource covering a wide range of topics. Includes Burgess, R.G.: Keeping Field Notes, pp.191-194; Gans, Herbert: The Participant Observer as a Human Being: Observations on the Personal Aspects of Fieldwork, pp.53-61; Webb, Beatrice: The Art of Note Taking, pp.195-199

Burgess, Rogert G. (1990) In the Field: An Introduction to Field Research, London: Routledge

Robson, Colin (1993) Real World Research: A Resource for Social Scientists and Practitioner-Researchers, Blackwell, £32.67
Carrying out enquiry tasks in complex, messy, poorly controlled situations. Addresses both quantitative and qualitative approaches.

Ethnography
Agar, Michael H. (1980) The Professional Stranger: An Informal Introduction to Ethnography, Academic Press
Highly readable, though a little confusingly organised. Many examples of where the author himself went wrong in his early ethnographic work.

Brewer, John D. (2000) Ethnography, Open University Press
A defence of ethnography and its continuing relevance in the face of the post-modernist onslaught. Some guidelines on good practice, analysis and interpretation, but not primarily a 'how-to' book. Interesting ethnographic examples from Northern Ireland (including the RUC).

Fetterman, David (1998) Ethnography Step by Step, 2nd edition, Sage
A concise and practical guide, with chapters on concepts, methods, equipment, analysis, writing and ethics. A good introduction to the subject.

Hammersley, Martyn (1992) What's wrong with Ethnography?, London: Routledge
Not a how-to book, but a look at the issues surrounding modern ethnography.

Hammersley, Martyn and Atkinson, P (1983) Ethnography: Principles in Practice, 2nd edition, London: Tavistock
While the first chapter is fairly philosophical, the rest of this book is highly practical, discussing issues such as access, field relations, listening and the process of analysis. Hightly recommended.

Participant Observation
Dewalt, Kathleen M & Dewalt, Billie R (2002) Participant Observation, pp288, £21.70 (paperback)
A guide to the collection of systematic data in naturalistic settings.

Jorgensen, Danny L. (1989) Participant Observation: A Methodology for Human Studies, Sage Publications, Applied Social Research Methods vol. 15, £12.99

Spradley, James P. (1980) Participant Observation, pp195, £19.99
Recommended to me by Michael Andrews.

Covert Observation
Holdaway, S. (1983) Inside the British Police: A Force at Work, Oxford, Blackwell
Seems to be out of print.

Workplace Ethnography
Heath, C.C., Knoblauch, H. and P. Luff (2000) Technology and Social Interaction: The emergence of 'workplace studies'. British Journal of Sociology, 51, 2, pp. 299-320

Schwartzman, Helen B (1993) Ethnography in Organisations, Sage Qualitative Research Methods Series Vol. 27

Traweek, Sharon (1988) Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press

Children
Cazden, C. (1988) Classroom Discourse, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann

Fine, Gary Alan and Sandstrom, Kent (1988) Knowing Children: Participant Observation with Minors, Sage Publications

Hammersley, Martyn (1990) Classroom Ethnography: Empirical and Methodological Essays, Open University Press

Informants
Johnson, Jeffrey (1990) Selecting Ethnographic Informants, Sage Qualitative Methods Series

Interviewing
Spradley, James P. (1979) The Ethnographic Interview, New York: Holt Reinhart

Questionnaires
Oppenheim, B. (2000) Questionnaire Design, Continuum International Publishing Group
The latest edition of a long-established work also includes coverage of interviewing. Discusses issues such as attitude scaling, pilot testing, question wording.

Field Notes
Emerson, R. Fretz, R., and Shaw L. (1995) Writing Ethnographic Field Notes, Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing and Publishing, University of Chicago Press

Maanen, J. (1988) Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography, Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing and Publishing, University of Chicago Press
Here's a review: http://dannyreviews.com/h/Tales_of_the_Field.html

Discourse Analysis
Wetherell, Margaret, Taylor, Stephanie, and Yates, Simeon (2001) Discourse Theory and Practice, Sage, £18.99
Course reader for the OU course Discourse Analysis.

Wetherell, Margaret, Taylor, Stephanie, and Yates, Simeon J. (2001) Discourse As Data: A Guide for Analysis, Sage
Course text for the OU course Discourse Analysis.

Drew, P. and Heritage, J. (1992) Talk at Work, New York: Cambridge University Press
A collection of articles looking at language and interaction in institutional settings.

Psathas, George (1994) Conversation Analysis, Sage

The Internet
Miller, Daniel and Slater, Don (2000) The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach, Oxford: Berg
Based on ethnographic work in Trinidad.

Hine, Christine (2000) Virtual Ethnography, Sage, £19.99
Centred on a single event - the trial of nanny Louise Woodward.

Grounded Theory
Glaser, Barney and Strauss, Anselm (1967) The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, New York: Aldine
The classic work on grounded theory, showing how theory can emerge from the data. Not sure about that 'discovery', though.

Charmaz, Kathy (1988) The Grounded Theory Method: An Explication and Interpretation, in Emerson, Robert (ed.) Contemporary Field Research: A Collection of Readings, Waveland Press, pp. 109-125

Corbin, Juliet and Strauss, Anselm (1990) Grounded Theory Research: Procedures, Canons and Evaluative Criteria, Qualitative Sociology, 13, pp.3-21

Strauss, Anselm and Corbin, Juliet (1998) Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory, Sage Publications

Focus Groups
Stewart, David W., and Shamdasani, Prem N. (1990) Focus Groups, Sage Applied Social Research Methods Series Vol. 20

Ethnography in User Requirements and Design
Anderson, Bob (1996) Work, Ethnography and System Design
http://www.rxrc.xerox.com/publis/cam-trs/html/epc-1996-103.htm

Blomberg, J. et al. (1993) Ethnographic field methods and the relation to design, in D. Schuler and A. Namioka, (Eds.) Participatory Design, Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 123-155

Forsythe, D (1997) Representing the User in Software Design
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/forsythe.paper.html

Hughes, John A. et al. (1995) The role of ethnography in interactive systems design, Interactions, April

Hughes, John A., King, V., Rodden, T. and Andersen, H. (1994) Moving Out from the Control Room: Ethnography in System Design, CSCW'94, ACM Press

Hughes, John A., Randall, David and Shapiro, Dan (1992) Faltering from Ethnography to Design, CSCW'92 Proceedings, ACM Press

Hughes, John A., Randall, Dave and Shapiro, Dan (1993) From Ethnographic Record to System Design: Some experiences from the field, Computer Supported Cooperative Work 1: 123-141

Nardi, Bonnie (1997) The Use of Ethnographic Methods in Design and Evaluation, in Helander, M., Landauer, T. and Prabhu, P. (Eds.) Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction II, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier Science. Pp.361-366

Simonsen, Jasper and Finn Kensing (1997) Using Ethnography in Contextual Design, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 40 No. 7, pp. 82-88, July 1997

Sommerville, I., Rodden, T., Sawyer, P. Bentley, R. and Twidale, M. (1994) Integrating ethnography into the requirements engineering process, RE'93, San Diego CA

Viller, S. and Sommerville, I. (1998) Social Analysis in the Requirements Engineering Process: from Ethnography to Method, Technical Report CSEG/14/98, Lancaster University

Ethnography in HCI/CSCW
Cooper, G., C. Hine, J. Low, S. Woolgar (1993) Ethnography and HCI, CRICT Discussion Paper 39, Brunel University; later published as Cooper, G., Hine, C., Rachel, J., & Woolgar, S., Ethnography and HCI, in: Thomas, P.J. (Ed.), The Social and Interactional Dimensions of Human-Computer Interfaces, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp.11-36

Forsythe, Diana (1999) "It's Just a Matter of Common Sense": Ethnography as Invisible Work, CSCW 8: 127-145
An excellent account of what ethnography is not. Highly recommended.

Harper, Richard, The Organisation in Ethnography: A Discussion of Ethnographic Fieldwork Programs in CSCW, online at http://www.surrey.ac.uk/dwrc/papers.html

Plowman, L. (1996) Rethinking the role of the fieldworker for CSCW: ethnography by proxy, University of Sussex, Cognitive Science Research Papers No. 417

Plowman, L., Harper, R. and Rogers, Y (1996) The 'Professional Stranger', University of Sussex, Cognitive Science Research Papers No. 428, ISSN 1350-3162
A worthwhile collection of eight articles arising from a workshop at ECSCW'95 (Stockholm, Sweden), takes its title from Agar. The articles largely focus on the practice of ethnography in the workplace to inform CSCW and HCI.

Tang, John C. (1991) Findings from Observational Studies of Collaborative Work, IJMMS 34, 2 (1991), 143-160.

Medical
Berg, Marc (1997) "Practices of reading and writing: the constitutive role of the patient record in medical work." Sociology of Health and Illness

Forsythe, Diana (1992) Blaming the User in Medical Informatics: The Cultural Nature of Scientific Practice. In David Hess and Linda Layne, eds., Knowledge and Society. Volume 9. The Anthropology of Science and Technology, pp 95-111. Greenwich, CN: JAI

Greatbatch, D. L., Luff, P. K., Heath, C. C. & P. Campion (1993) Interpersonal communication and human-computer interaction: an examination of the use of computers in medical consultations. Interacting with Computers. Vol. 5, No. 2, pp 216-234

Greatbatch, D., Heath, C.C., Campion, P. and Luff, P. (1995) How Do Desk-Top Computers Affect the Doctor-Patient Interaction?, Family Practice 12(1): 32-36

Heath, C. C. & P. Luff (1996) Documents and professional practice: 'bad' organisational reasons for 'good' medical records, Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Boston: ACM Press pp. 354-363

Ethnographies
Harper, Richard, Information that Counts: A Sociological View of Information Navigation and Some Remarks about the World Wide Web,
http://www.surrey.ac.uk/dwrc/papers.html
A look at the work of country 'desk officers' at the IMF, in particular how they interact with different types of information.

Harper, Richard & Hughes, John A. (1993) "What a f-ing system! Send 'em all to the same place and then expect us to stop 'em hitting": Making Technology Work in Air Traffic Control, in Graham Button (ed.) Technology in Working Order: Studies of Work, Interaction and Technology, London: Routledge, online at http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/Fieldwork/Onlinepapers1.html

Heath, Christian and Paul Luff (1992) "Collaboration and Control: Crisis Management and Multimedia Technology in London Underground Line Control Rooms", Computer Supported Cooperative Work, vol. 1, no. 1-2, pp. 69-94

Hess, David, "Introduction: The New Ethnography and the Anthropology of Science and Technology." In Knowledge and Society: The Anthropology of Science and Technology, D. Hess and L. Layne, editors, pp. 1 - 26, Greenwich, CT: JAI

Hutchins, E. and Klausen, Tove (2000) "Distributed Cognition in an Airline Cockpit", in Stephanie Taylor (Ed.) Ethnographic Research: A Reader, Sage (Open University text), online at http://hci.ucsd.edu/10/

Suchman, L. and Wynn, E. (1984) Procedures and Problems in the Office, Office Technology and People, Vol. 2, pp.134-154

Suchman, Lucy (1992) "Technologies of Accountability: On Lizards and Airplanes." In Technology in Working Order: Studies of Work, Interaction, and Technology, G. Button (ed.), London, Routledge

Tyson, Philip J. (1992) The Desk as a Social Institution, Rank Xerox Research Centre (Cambridge) Technical Report EPC-1992-130, http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/Fieldwork/Onlinepapers1.html
An observational study of a research lab reception desk, looking at both ideas from various disciplines about desks and the way people actually relate to their desks.

Zuboff, Shoshana (1984) In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power, New York: Basic