Moving out from the control room: ethnography in system design

  • Authors:

  • John Hughes;Val King;Tom Rodden;Hans Andersen

  • Affiliations:

  • CSCW Research Centre, Computing and Sociology Department, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YR, U.K.;CSCW Research Centre, Computing and Sociology Department, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YR, U.K.;CSCW Research Centre, Computing and Sociology Department, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YR, U.K.;CSCW Research Centre, Computing and Sociology Department, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YR, U.K.

  • Venue:
  • CSCW '94 Proceedings of the 1994 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work
  • Year:
  • 1994

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Abstract

Ethnography has gained considerable prominence as a technique for informing CSCW systems development of the nature of work. Experiences of ethnography reported to date have focused on the use of prolonged on-going enthnography to inform systems design. A considerable number of these studies have taken place within constrained and focused work domain. This paper reflects more generally on the experiences of using ethnography across a number of different projects and in a variety of domains of study. We identify a number of ways in which we have used ethnography to inform design and consider the benefits and problems of each.