Ethnography, theory and systems design: from intuition to insight
Ethnography, theory and systems design: from intuition to insight
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DOI：
10.1006/ijhc.2000.0376
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发表时间：
2000-07-01
影响因子：
5.4
通讯作者：
Crerar, A
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Macaulay, C;Benyon, D;Crerar, A
这篇论文的想法来自于1998年在丹麦举行的ISCRAT会议上关于文化-历史活动理论(CHAT)的辩论。在将Chat纳入系统设计的运动中，主要活动家邦妮·纳尔迪提出了这个问题；培训更好的民族志学者，难道不比让他们承担Chat这样一系列复杂的理论概念和辩论更能给设计带来更大的好处吗？本文试图根据我们在英国一家报纸的长期设计民族志中应用聊天概念的经验来回答这个问题。它考察了人种学、理论和系统设计之间经常存在争议的三元关系的历史，并认为聊天框架为我们提供了从人种学直觉转向设计洞察力的机会，因此对纳尔迪问题的答案是否定的--出于许多原因，仅仅培训优秀的民族志学者不太可能足够(尤其是缺乏经验的田野工作者如何成为设计民族志工作者的问题)。明确使用理论框架，至少是那些特别适合于设计问题的框架，通过鼓励对研究人员在构建研究对象中的角色进行更大的反思，阻止了民族志学者将自己视为“代理用户”的倾向。在更实际的层面上，它帮助现场工作人员驾驭任何现场经验抛出的似乎永无止境的大量“潜在有趣的材料”。(C)2000年学术出版社。
The idea for this paper came from a debate at the 1998 ISCRAT conference in Denmark on cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). A leading activist in the movement to bring CHAT into systems design, Bonnie Nardi, asked the question; would design not benefit more from training better ethnographers than from burdening them with such a complex set of theoretical concepts and debates as CHAT? This paper seeks to answer that question on the basis of our experiences applying CHAT concepts in a long-term design ethnography at a UK newspaper. It examines the history of the often controversial triadic relationship between ethnography, theory and systems design and argues that the CHAT framework provided us with the opportunity to move from ethnographic intuition to design insight, and that therefore the answer to Nardi's question is no-simply training good ethnographers is unlikely to be enough for a number of reasons (not least of which is the problem of how inexperienced fieldworkers become design ethnographers). The explicit use of theoretical frameworks, at least those such as CHAT which are particularly suited to design issues, discourages the tendency for ethnographers to see themselves as "proxy users" by encouraging greater reflexivity about the researcher's role in constructing the object of study. At a more pragmatic level, it helps the fieldworker navigate the apparently never-ending mass of "potentially interesting material" any field experience throws up. (C) 2000 Academic Press.