Re: UCD & innovation thread

At 12:11 23/09/2003 +0100, you wrote:
>Re: Gilbert's comment
>
>"If e-commerce designers had gone down the order form route, how many
>issues associated with shopping carts would have been avoided?  Would
>ethnographers interviewed mail order customers rather than supermarket
>shoppers?"
>
>Gilbert makes a good point here about problem bounding, but please don't
>confuse "Ethnography" with "interviewing". The former is a much more
>complex activity than simply drawing up a list of questions and doing a
>"hit & run" study, however attractive that is to managers on tight
>project budgets and timescales!

Ethnography and interviewing have little to do with each other.
Unstructured or semi-s interviewing *can* have something to do. But there
is really no way of discovering things that you know nothing about,
except.....through PO (participant observation). Half-decent PO takes about
a couple of days to get into....depending on context, jargon.....

There Is No Alternative (or TINA) as MT (gawd) used to say....

Louise

>Louise Ferguson
>Technologist, user experience
>UPA e-Voting project
>Council, UK UPA
>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/upa-evoting
>
>m: 07810 260637
>e: [email protected]
>w: www.louiseferguson.com
>blog: www.louiseferguson.com/cityofbits.htm
>London events: www.louiseferguson.com/events.htm
>25 Mount Adon Park, London SE22 0DS

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