Doing ethnography and experiments together to explore collaborative photograph handling.

Ormerod, Thomas C. and Morley, Nicola and Mariani, John and Lewis, Kevin and Hitch, Graham and Mathrick, James and Rodden, Tom (2004) Doing ethnography and experiments together to explore collaborative photograph handling. Design For Life, 2. pp. 81-84.

Abstract

We describe the application of ethnography and experimentation to the specification and evaluation of a browser to support collaborative sharing of photographs in family contexts. In an extension of this mixed-method approach, we adopted an ethnographic stance to the posthoc analysis of couples’ interactions recorded during the experimental studies. The experiments and post-experiment analyses yielded usability enhancements and unexpected interaction patterns among couples in categorising and retrieving photographs that led to browser redesign.