Steps Towards a History of
Ethnomethodology in HCI & CSCW:
Talking about Technomethodology
Joseph ‘Jofish’ Kaye
Microsoft Research, Cambridge
Cornell Information Science, Ithaca NY
Talk Outline
I. Quick histories of HCI, CSCW, and EM
II. Technomethodology: approaches to solving
the problem of communicating across the
disciplinary boundary
III. Building and arguing a hybrid discipline
A (brief) history of computing
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
IBM & Xerox – one machine for many users
The founding of Xerox PARC (1972)
Licklader: interactive access
PCs: one user, one machine
HCI: the user becomes the important component
CSCW: can’t model users; social matters
(ubiquitous computing: one user, many
computers)
A (brief) look at EM
(as it looks from HCI)
• Garfinkel
– (Backfilling history: Notes towards a sociological
theory of information (1952))
– Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967)
– Studies of work (1972-)
• Sacks
• Suchman
– Plans & Situated Actions (1987)
• Air traffic control
EM in HCI & CSCW
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Air traffic control, ground control
Photocopiers
Print shops
Doctors’ offices
Highways
Offices
(and, slightly more recently) the home and
day-to-day use of ‘mundane’ technologies
EM in HCI & CSCW
• Bentley, R., Hughes, J.A., Randall, D., Rodden, T., Sawyer, P., Shapiro, D., Sommerville, I.
Ethnographically-informed systems design for air traffic control. Proc. CSCW’92 123-129.
• Harper, R. and Hughes, J.A. (1992), “What a F-ing System! Send em all to the same place and
then expect us to stop em hitting”: Making technology work in air traffic control, in Technology
and Working Order: Studies of Work, Interaction and Technology, ed, G. Button, 127-144,
London: Routledge.
• Harper, R., Hughes, J.A. and Shapiro, D. (1991), Harmonious Working and CSCW: Computer
Technology and Air Traffic Control, in Studies in Computer Supported Cooperative Work: Theory,
Practice and Design, ed. J. Bowers and S. Benford, Amsterdam, North-Holland.
• MacKay, Wendy E. Is paper safer? The role of paper flight strips in air traffic control. ACM
Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 6(4) December 1999.
• Heath, C. and Luff, P. (1992), Collaboration and control: Crisis management and multimedia
technology in London Underground line control rooms, Computer Supported Cooperative Work,
1(1-2): 69-94.
• Bowers, J., Button, G. and Sharrock, W., "Workflow from Within and Without", Proc. ECSCW'95,
Stockholm, Sweden, September 1995.
• Gerson E, Star S L, 1986, "Analyzing Due Process in the Workplace" ACM Transactions on Office
Information Systems 4 257-270
• Suchman, Lucy. Office procedures as practical action: Models of work and system design. ACM
Transactions on Office Information Systems 1(4) October 1983 320-328.
But the biggest impact:
Ethnomethodologically-informed
ethnography
Ethnomethodologically informed
ethnography (*)
• Observation of end users is clearly useful
• But why this way of doing ethnography?
• EM-informed ethnography is rooted in the
experience and methods of members;
• EM-informed ethnography is ‘theory free’;
• EM-informed ethnography appears more
scientific to those uncomfortable with such a
soft-y, relativist and apparently arbitrary thing
‘Ethnography’ (in HCI)
• Observation of end users is clearly useful
• But why this way of doing ethnography?
• EM-informed ethnography is rooted in the
experience and methods of members (*);
• EM-informed ethnography is ‘theory free’;
• EM-informed ethnography appears more
scientific to those uncomfortable with such a
soft-y, relativist and apparently arbitrary thing
‘Ethnography’ (in HCI)
• Observation of end users is clearly useful
• But why this way of doing ethnography?
• EM-informed ethnography is rooted in “the
detailed and observable practices which make up
the incarnate production of ordinary social facts”
• EM-informed ethnography is ‘theory free’;
• EM-informed ethnography appears more
scientific to those uncomfortable with such a
soft-y, relativist and apparently arbitrary thing
Lynch, M., Livingstone, E. and Garfinkel, H., “Temporal Order in Laboratory Work”, in KnollCentina and Mulkay (eds), “Science Observed”, Sage, London, 1983.
The problem
How do you generate technology design
decisions from ethnographic observation?
or
the problem of doing
technomethodology
The difficulties of doing TM
• How can ethnographers and
ethnomethodologists apply the
understandings they have developed in the
course of their observations to the design of
technical systems?
and
• How can designers and engineers learn from
ethnomethodological insights to inform the
design of technical systems?
Two related problems
• ‘paradox of systems design’: introducing
technology to support ‘large-scale’ activities
while transforming the ‘small-scale’ detail of
action can systematically undermine the very
small-scale practices through which largescale action is accomplished
• ‘paradox of technomethodology’: the
difficulty of reconciling detail, action in the
instant, with the need to build a technology.
Button, G. and Dourish, P. 1996. Technomethodology: paradoxes and possibilities. In Proc. CHI
'96. ACM Press, New York, NY, 19-26.
Some possible solutions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
‘Technomethodology’ solutions
Implications for Design (but…)
Soup to Nuts: Build it Yourself
Pattern Language
Hybrid Discipline
1. Button & Dourish’s 1996 Solutions
• Learn from the ethnomethodologist
• Learn from the ethnomethodography
• Learning from ethnomethodology
– … or the development of a hybrid discipline
Button, G. and Dourish, P. 1996. Technomethodology: paradoxes and possibilities. In Proc. CHI
'96. ACM Press, New York, NY, 19-26.
2. Implications for Design
(the solution)
• Solution to the problem
• Provide suggestions for implementations
• i.e., at the end of a study that demonstrated
the impact of fears on archiving practices:
“backup systems ought to be less transparent ,
assuaging the user’s fears of loss.”
• But…
Kaye, J. 'J.', Vertesi, J., Avery, S., Dafoe, A., David, S., Onaga, L., Rosero, I., and Pinch, T. To Have
and to Hold: Exploring the Personal Archive. Proc. CHI 2006.
2. Implications for Design
(Dourish: the problem)
• A poor metric for evaluating an ethnography
• Misses out on learning from a deeper, stronger,
and ultimately more informative connection on
the analytical level with the benefit of theoretical
understandings
• Ethnographic observation for ‘shaping research
(or corporate) strategy’ rather than uncovering
constraints or opportunities in a particular
exercise. (but how to build better systems?)
Dourish, P. Implications for Design. Proc. CHI’06
3. Build it Yourself
• ‘Soup to nuts’
– Observe
– Prototype
– Test
– Build
– Evaluate
• e.g. MySplitTime
• But…
Esbjörnsson, M., Brown, B., Juhlin, O., Normark, D., Östergren, M., and Laurier, E. 2006.
Watching the cars go round and round: designing for active spectating. In Proc CHI '06. ACM
Press, New York, NY, 1221-1224.
3. Build it Yourself
(problem)
• Watching cars, fine. But… ATC? Ground
control?
• Local expertise
• Scale
Esbjörnsson, M., Brown, B., Juhlin, O., Normark, D., Östergren, M., and Laurier, E. 2006.
Watching the cars go round and round: designing for active spectating. In Proc CHI '06. ACM
Press, New York, NY, 1221-1224.
4. Patterns
• a la Christopher Alexander
– “We have highlighted the aspects of Alexander’s patterns
that fit well with ethnomethodological approach, but some
of the more positivist, theoretical, solution-oriented
aspects of his research1 we had to reject, as the collection
of studies from which we were drawing our patterns
stands philosophically in opposition to his.” [p84]
• ‘patterns of cooperative interaction’
• Online library
• but…
1
: As well as some of the more ‘cosmological’!
Martin, D. and Sommerville, I. Patterns of Cooperative Interaction: Linking Ethnomethodology
and Design. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 11(1) March 2004 59-89.
4. Patterns
• (either) Can be hard to apply…
• (or) the pattern misses out on the very
‘interactional what’ that authors are trying to
express.
• Online library seems not highly used
Martin, D. and Sommerville, I. Patterns of Cooperative Interaction: Linking Ethnomethodology
and Design. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 11(1) March 2004 59-89.
5. A hybrid discipline
(Crabtree’s version)
1. Let designers build whatever they want with whomever they want, subject
to their own constraints.
2. Deploy the objects of design in real world settings.
3. Treat deployment as a breaching experiment.
4. Explicate the accountable structures of practical action made visible in the
breach.
5. Explore the topics identified in the breach through the study of perspicuous
settings.
6. Use the studies of perspicuous settings to flesh out abstract design
concepts.
7. Deploy the new design solution in real world settings and study its use.
8. Repeat the process until the research agenda has been satisfied for all
practical purposes.”
Crabtree, A. 2004. Taking technomethodology seriously: hybrid change in the
ethnomethodology-design relationship. Eur. J. Inf. Syst. 13, 3 (Sep. 2004), 195-209
5. A hybrid discipline (Crabtree)
• But…
– Hard to find cooperative designers
• Who’ll let you throw half their work away
– Much as Dourish (2006), there’s an unexamined
question of power relationships
– It reproduces the problems of communicating
between designers and ethnographers that we
observed from the start.
Crabtree, A. 2004. Taking technomethodology seriously: hybrid change in the
ethnomethodology-design relationship. Eur. J. Inf. Syst. 13, 3 (Sep. 2004), 195-209
A true hybrid discipline?
• Garfinkel: EM  world
• “In his later writings, Garfinkel made suggestions
for hybridizing ethnomethodology with other
disciplines (mathematics, natural sciences, legal
studies, etc.), so that the “product” of the
research would not take the form of reports
about exotic practices; instead it would consist of
efforts to develop hybrid disciplines in which
ethnomethodological studies of, for example,
lawyer’s work would contribute to legal
research.”
Lynch, M. (1994) Scientific Practice and Ordinary Action, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
p 274; Lynch references Garfinkel’s infamous & unpublished Blue Book.
A true hybrid discipline?
• Can technological design and
ethnomethodology actually meet in the
middle, hybridizing both in a post-disciplinary
approach that can engage with each on its
own terms, while drawing from both for a
common goal?
Currently: discussion.
• Clearly no obvious solution.
• Dourish 2006 very influential in encouraging
discussion
– Even if there’s a lot of disagreement over what it
means
• A community and field in flux
– Particularly with a current trend moving from
task-focused to experience-focused HCI
Thank you
• Many thanks to Michael Lynch, Phoebe
Sengers, Paul Dourish, Janet Vertesi, Barry
Brown and particularly Darren Reed and Mark
Blythe.
jofish@cornell.edu
(Connections)
• John Seeley Brown, Director of PARC was a
professor at UC Irvine 1969-73, at the same
time as Sacks
• JSB hires Eleanor Wynn who hires Suchman
• Suchman learns about EM (secondhand!)
through Doug Macbeth (taking Garfinkel’s
classes at UCLA)