Blog #19: Reflexivity in digital anthropology

Reflexivity in digital anthropology

Authors : Jennifer A. Rod

Authors Bios: Jennifer A. Rod: Assistant Professor at Drexel's School of Information and has a PhD in Computer Science from UC Irvine.

Venue - This paper was presented at the CHI '11 Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems.

Summary:

Hypothesis: The paper overviews key aspects its use in HCI, as well as in the anthropological approach. Her hypothesis is that studies can better understand how effectively the use of different types of ethnography can make HCI research  better and easier in the future. 


Methods: Jennifer A. Rod explained 3 different types of ethnography approaches that can be  appled to HCI, although only one is currently used in digital anthropology.

• realist approach: focuses on the process of collecting information over a long period of time and determining causes for what was observed

• confessional approach : relies on the ethnographer explaining their own involvement with the subject being studied and allows for a greater understanding of the perspective being observed.

• impressionistic approach : focuses on telling a story and letting detailed observation speak for itself in setting the stage for the ethnography and allowing for future analysis. 

Using these approaches, and having different points of view in gathering data would allow for the most optimal answers that one might have when doing an ethnography.  

Results: Three types of ethnographies could be created out of the 3 approaches listed above.

• Formative Ethnographies: study current use of a product or tool and make observations as to how it can be improved. 

• Summative Ethnographies: focus purely on how a digital tool is used by a specific group of people and explain this relationship in depth with no suggestions for improvement.

• Iteratively Evaluative Ethnographies: studies that are conducted by putting a prototype product or tool in use and studying how it becomes used, then evaluate it all over again in another study. 

Conclusion:  Dr. Rod concludes the paper by stating that standards need to be adopted for ethnography in HCI in order to continue improving on technology and its relationship with users. By following the different approaches for ethnographies, one would have many different results, and conclude on more answers then needed. 

Discussion:  To better HCI for the future, and to allow user interfaces to become better will be the future of the industry. But my personal opinion, maybe technology shouldn't be taken for granted, and i hope that humans can embraces technology, but shouldn't have there lived ruled by technology. It is good to research technology, better interaction in technology is a good thing, but it may defeat our culture ultimately.