Abstract
Ethnographic research methods are getting more and more popular in disciplines that have mainly been dominated by quantitative or experimental methodological approaches. Especially in technology-driven research, ethnography seems to enrich common approaches by investigating the use of technology in the everyday life of prospective users. By participating in and observing the users and their mundane activities, routines and rituals ethnography provides insights that can be integrated in the design process to improve the usability of the artifact. This article discusses the intersection of ethnography and usability by introducing ethnographic methods, discussing their application in the context of design for elderly and presenting results of an ethnographic case study in the field of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL).
1 Introduction
The rise of ICT over the last decades has fundamentally changed social habits and practices in western societies and accelerated real-time communication and information through virtualization and digitalization. Due to these accelerations design has acquired a fundamentally new character and significance for society, as can be studied in publications on new design approaches like service-design or public-design [3]. Technical devices have become ubiquitous in everyday life and technology is now a “matter of concern” [13]. Not only is it shaping everyday life, it also determines social and cultural patterns of practice and knowledge.
At the same time, due to a reduced birth rate on the one hand and an increase of life expectancy on the other, ageing has become a key concern in Western societies. Politicians as well as scientists and service providers are seeking strategies to overcome this challenge. AAL represents one such strategy. Here, technological innovations are developed to support a growing population of elderly in need of help for managing their everyday activities. Designed as age-friendly devices, they should be adaptive, usable, affordable, discreet and intuitive and allow the elderly to stay independent in various areas of their life especially with regards to health, housing, mobility, security and communication. At the same time the age-specific context of AAL requires a design process that is not only focusing on the technological aspects of the development but also takes the specific needs of the users as well as those of other possible stakeholders like care-givers or family members into account. Although dealing with heterogeneous contexts is symptomatic of innovation processes, in this field it is especially challenging because of the users’ age and the needs that come with it.
In this context, ethnographic research methods can represent an appropriate strategy for obtaining knowledge about the elderly’s everyday usage of technical devices but also about their attitudes towards and their experiences with technology. Furthermore, by conducting participant observation in their households or accompanying them in their everyday activities knowledge about their obvious activities as well as about their routines, their habits and their culture is generated. Making their tacit knowledge visible by studying their everyday lives over a long time is one of the major advantages of ethnography and can inform the design process.
In the following, I argue that working with ethnographic research methods or collaborating with an ethnographer can be fruitful for the design of AAL. In order to substantiate my claim, I present some results of my fieldwork in AAL projects and discuss the implications of applying ethnographic research methods in usability studies. In my PhD project I focus especially on the socio-material assemblage produced by the different actors involved in the design process and the cultural impact of assistive technologies on age. My fieldwork is guided by two questions: First, how is age inscribed into technological objects? And second, which ideas, images and cultural concepts of aging are therefore relevant for the involved actors? Thereto, I aim to answer the question, how the use of technical assistance influences cultural patterns and social practices of aging? Does AAL reinforce or resolve social inequality and exclusion? And finally, is AAL a political strategy that applies the neoliberal imperative of self-optimization to aging?
In this article, I focus more precisely on the methodological aspects and the intersection of ethnography and usability in the context of design for elderly. The empirical background is an ethnographic field study in the context of AAL, in the context of which I participated in different AAL-projects and observed them ethnographically. The major part of the field study took place during the user tests and was conducted in the households of the test persons as well as in the laboratory. On the basis of these empirical cases I exemplify how ethnographical methods can be useful tools to investigate the elderly’s everyday use of AAL.
2 Meeting Mr. Wolf
“At home, I would simply call”, Mr. Wolf says, “I would simply pick up the receiver and dial the number and then I can talk to the person.”1[1] But there is no telephone on the table of the laboratory. Thus, Mr. Wolf tries again to start the chat program of the flat device lying in front of him. “Push the button and then start the program”, he whispers, while his eyes rapidly wander from one icon to the other, but again it is not the right one. Mr. Wolf moves nervously on his seat, puts the chair a bit closer to the table and tries a third time. It works and a new screen opens.
Mr. Wolf is testing a cognitive training platform for older users with less or no experience in ICT that runs on a tablet. It is his first visit in the usability laboratory of the clinical study. Some weeks ago he spotted an announcement in his local newspaper that the university is looking for people older than 60 to take part in a study. Mr. Wolf was interested and dialed the number mentioned in the paper and Mr. Schreiner, the scientific staff of the study, answered the phone, explained the conditions and finally Mr. Wolf agreed. During the interview, which I conducted with him at his home, he explained that he was curious to get in touch with new technology that he had never used before, and that he was also interested in his test results because of one of his biggest fears: dementia.
The aim of the project, in which Mr. Wolf participates as a test person, is to design an interactive communication platform for older persons suffering mild cognitive impairments or more serious forms of dementia to communicate with their family members, relatives or care givers easily. Although Mr. Wolf has no cognitive impairments, the 68-year-old man took part in the study, because he wanted to know if he is still able to adapt to new technology and because “I am still curious what’s going on”, as he mentioned in the interview. He was one of the participants in the control group and the scene, I described above, is taking place in the laboratory, where he explored the platform for the first time.
“It is still a challenge to win participants that are motivated to take part in several sessions, answering several questions and doing several tests”, Eva Schreiner, the scientific member of the study, summarizes her experiences. “But this time we changed the roles and it worked out fine!”, she complements her statement. What Eva Schreiner is referring to is on the one hand the collaboration with an ethnographer (the author) and on the other the active participation of the test users in all stages of the design process.
3 Doing Ethnography
Predictions state that within the next 40 years the number of people diagnosed with a form of dementia will rise from 35.6 million in 2010 to 114.4 million in 2050 [2]. Despite high investments in pharmaceutical research there is no successful medical cure for dementia yet. For this reason, it is important to investigate non-medical treatments and care approaches for professional and informal care that could lead to a preservation of independence and increase life quality of the dementia patient and the carers [7]. Here innovative solutions that connect social, spatial, technical and structural elements are necessary to achieve supportive environments for all stakeholders. Therefore, an approach taking into account the needs and values of the different stakeholders while also actively involving them in the design of new solutions is indispensable. But the interaction of the various stakeholders is marked by complexity and a multiple agency. There are a lot more actors to consider than simply the user or the computer scientist for example, among others, husband or wife, children and grand-children, relatives, care providers, medical and health services should be taken into account. Taking this multiple agency into consideration is an ambitious task in which ethnography can assume an important role. But what is ethnography all about?
Ethnography is no method in a strict sense: It does not consist of predetermined instructions that guide the scientist through the research process, but rather it is characterized by a specific openness towards situations that first establish when you are in the field [5]. Second, it is a methodological approach that is based on experiencing things. The credo is: To produce knowledge about people’s everyday life you have to live with them and do what they do to get an idea of what it is like to live their lives. Thus, immediate and constant experience through participation is a key concept for ethnographic research. In classical field studies, especially in cultural anthropology or ethnology, the ethnographer lives for at least one year in the social group that he or she is interested in and tries to learn about their cultural and social habits, rituals, symbols and practices by taking part in their everyday activities. As you can imagine, it is not always easy to get access to and become a member of a group, especially if you do not speak their language, know their habits or have any of the competences they need. But in most cases, there is a possibility to get into contact if you show respect and invest enough time. Although this scenario of field research sounds idealistic, it includes the above mentioned idea of understanding through experience. For this purpose, participant observation is indispensable. It opens the door for any kind of data collection but it has to be combined with other qualitative methods like interviews or the analysis of visual material or of field documents to get a “thick description” [9] of the observed culture. By taking part in everyday activities over a longer period of time the researcher is collecting various kinds of material: interviews, artefacts, notes on informal talks, thousands of diary notes, pictures and video takes, but overall it is always the presence of the researcher in the field that determines this data collection and its interpretation. For this, themes and topics as well as experiences and habits of the social members have to be considered seriously and be integrated into the research process. That is to say that the research process is highly depending on the willingness of the person of interest to share insights into his living environment. Trust plays an important role and determines how much the researcher gets to know during the field study. That’s why it is so important to build up a truthful relationship and take time. Especially if the researcher is interested in tacit knowledge, unconscious social practices or biographic information he or she has to be respectful, open-minded and willing to share their experiences, their backgrounds and their convictions as well. Consequently, ethnography is a subjective form of qualitative research and it depends on the researcher to mark his or her own position in the field by applying reflection and transparency in the immediate research process as well as in the text written about the research later (being back home).
There are different ways of applying ethnographic methods to the context of AAL and in a broader sense to HCI [4, 18, 19]. First of all, it is possible to collaborate with an ethnographer to gain insights into the elderly persons’ everyday usage of ICT [20]. The observation of the ethnographer provides the project members with information about habits, routines or experiences of the test person and his or her day-to-day activities. This information enhances the existing knowledge about the users and their sociocultural environment that is primarily based on standardized questionnaires or interviews and can be integrated in the design process. Second, it is possible that the ethnographer not only observes the living conditions of the users but also the work of the project itself. Bringing the project into the focus of ethnography adds a reflexive perspective that facilitates the analysis of the role and the influence of the project and its members. This perspective plays an important role in my own ethnographic research. Furthermore, it is also possible to adopt ethnographic methods by practitioners in HCI contexts [22]. Last but not least, ethnographic methods foster participative approaches where senior users are actively taking part in the design process [11]. To illustrate my last point, I present some ethnographic methods and their application in design for the elderly.
3.1 Cultural Probes
This technique was first applied by Gaver, Dunne and Pacenti [8] in their research on senior citizens tacit demands and needs (see also [23]). For this, they supplied the participants with small packages of artifacts – in most of the cases they include a camera, a map, a postcard, a diary – and a list of tasks to activate the seniors to document their everyday activities by the help of the artifacts. By giving the participants such an active role, the research team was able to gain insights into the seniors’ routine behaviors and their unconscious habits. At the same time, the participants were free to choose which and how many tasks they would like to fulfill. For example with the camera participants were able to visually document what it means to them to live in this community and with the map they could inscribe their most favorite walks or places. The advantage of this method is clear: Values, routines and emotions, that cannot be verbalized easily, can be communicated with the help of probes. Furthermore, the probes themselves can be used as evocative stimuli for further interviews or focus groups. For example, Minou Afzali [1] used cultural probes as a technique to explore the cultural and personal environments of residents in Swiss nursing homes with or without mild cognitive impairments to improve the design of the nursing environment. Because of their disease and their migratory background it was difficult to conduct interviews with some of the residents. By using cultural probes the participants of her study were enabled to express their feelings, likings and habits visually. For example, they could mark those places in the nursing home that they like best on a floor plan. This in turn is a useful hint for the nursing home to design those places in a more comfortable Way. Or in the case of residents suffering dementia, the places marked in the plan provide hints as to where to look for them in case they wander around.
3.2 Perceptual Walking Techniques
These techniques are characterized by the idea to accompany the participant in his or her walks through the community. This basic principle can be varied for example as perceptual walks, go-alongs or sound walks.
Perceptual walks are very useful in the beginning of the field research. Here, it helps to get in touch with the atmosphere, the environment and other contextual features of the field, on which the research should focus, for example traffic, noise, lighting conditions or spatial mood. Beside the focus on external conditions, the researcher can also concentrate on his or her own experiences while walking. In this case especially bodily expressions and feelings play an important role.
While the perceptual walk is mostly conducted in silence by the researcher and is documented by taking notes, the classical go-along is conducted together with the participant. He or she is in the center of interest. The walk is accompanied by an interview that is recorded or is documented afterwards in form of memory notes. Technically, it can be supported by GPS or interactive maps to collect further information. The method focuses on spatial impressions and perceptions of the test-person or the researcher (especially in the exploration of the field). Barbara Ratzenboeck for example investigates the media competences and use of older Austrian women. In order to do this, she goes along with them through their households while interviewing them about their ICT biographies [14].
Instead of focusing on verbal expressions the go-along can also be done as a sound walk. For this kind of walk the participant is alone or accompanied by the researcher (groups are also possible) and collects sounds he or she is confronted with during the walk. Similar to the go-along the sound walk also can be done as a silent walk where the participant is completely concentrating on the surrounding sounds. But it is also possible to do it as a listening walk. Here the question “What are you hearing?” is central to starting a conversation on further topics regarding the auditive environment. The sounds can be documented by audio files but also in sound maps as a transformation from sound to visual cues. Overall the sound walk can be understood as an auditive observation that concentrates on the human-sound-relationship in a spatial surrounding.
Focusing on environmental sounds can be a useful perspective to investigate the everyday lifeworld of senior citizens in urban areas [24]. For example, in their study “Mediated street spaces: intergenerational interactions, technologies and design” Murray and Sawchuk [16] investigate how intergenerational interactions in urban spaces are mediated by technologies. They apply a mobile ethnographic approach with go-alongs by accompanying the participants of the study through their urban environment.
3.3 Mapping Techniques
The documentation of tacit impressions, feelings or experiences is a necessary feature of ethnography. Mapping methods are helpful strategies to get in touch with the experiences of the participant’s social world. Mental maps, for example, are one form of mapping where the test-person draws a map of an imagined or real space. The mental maps should be drawn spontaneously and can be done at every step of the research project. The goal is to visualize the participant’s subjective social space. For this purpose, he or she maps social or spatial features that are important to him or her. These individual maps can be used in later interviews or stand alone as empirical data.
The analysis is carried out in two steps: First, the content features like objects, places, ways, borders, and people should be examined. Hereby it is also important to discuss what is missing on the map. As a second step, the researcher should focus on the way the map was drawn. The way the objects are spatially arranged (near or distant, central or peripheral) is providing information as well as the volume and size of the drawn objects. Altogether they can be used as cues for the subjective quality of the shown objects and their relation to the test person. Huldtgren, Vorman and Geiger [12] varied this mapping technique to design an interactive reminiscence map for users suffering dementia. For this purpose, they conducted interviews and participant observations in a nursing home to collect life events of the residents, which they mapped with visual or auditive cues that help elderly persons remember their own biographies with the help of the interactive map. The ethnographical approach was highly participative and the residents were actively engaged in the research process.
4 Observing Users
In order to design innovative solutions for older users that integrate the elderly persons’ needs and demands a user-centered approach is serving best. In the context of AAL, user-centered design takes into account the needs and values of the older users and actively involves them in the design process. But the interaction between participants and professionals as well as between participants and technology is marked by complexity and multiple agency. Here, an ethnographic approach can be helpful. Focusing on the needs of the prospective users by having a look at their households, their daily living conditions and their everyday use of technology can provide further insights for the design process. For this, ethnographic methods can be used at every stage of the project as a singular element or as a continuous process that accompanies the project.
In the study mentioned above most of the participant observation has been used. This is the main method of ethnography and the core element of field study. The leading idea is the interaction between the researcher and the observed members of the field. The physical presence of the researcher in the field is the precondition of data collection. By observing the everyday activities of the field members the researcher gains an inside look of what it means to live in this community. And by taking part in these activities he or she also experiences those living conditions.
Of course, participant observation needs to be well prepared and sometimes meeting the requirements can cost a lot of time especially when conducting the field study in a distant and foreign community. But participant observation cannot only be used for ethnological field studies, rather it is a very appropriate method to investigate everyday behavior just around the corner.
No matter where the participant observation is planned to be carried out, it is always necessary to gain access to the field. Here, different strategies are helpful. For example it is useful to identify the gatekeeper. This is a person that is highly respected in his community, possesses power or special knowledge and has the ability to connect the researcher to the ‘right’ person. Other roles are sponsors, that support your research project, or patrons, that vouch for your project.
The participant observation itself consists of four stages: First, a broad observation to orientate, gain first impressions of the field and its characteristics and identify gatekeepers or other important persons. Then you can start with a more focused observation to deepen your impressions, follow the members you have established contact to and observe their daily routines as well as important incidents within the community. Afterwards you can select your observation by concentrating only on a few participants, practices or places depending on your research questions and the access you have already achieved. The selection can be varied from time to time to receive a holistic understanding of the setting you observe. Finally, the exit has to be planned and done gradually. Here it is important to inform the contact persons early enough and to make clear again what you are going to do with the data you have collected.
Below I will describe my participant observation in a second AAL-project that has designed an Internet based learning and communication platform for older users (called LeVer) which is similar to the ones in the study mentioned above (Figure 1).
The main feature of the program is a cognitive memory training (Figure 2) but it also contains a communication platform as well as information (Figure 3) about healthy ageing like nutrition, sport or mobility (see Haesner, Steinert, O’Sullivan, & Steinhagen-Thiessen in this issue, and also [10]).
Although the program deals with aspects of memory and the training tasks primarily address memory practices, the platform does not target dementia directly. For the research project accompanying the design process this was a great challenge especially during the user-tests. Here, ethnographic research was a helpful tool to bring the user’s feelings and impressions, which they experienced while doing the training privately in their own households, into the design process (see [6]).
In this project, the participant observation took place during the user-testing stage of the project. I attended the households of ten test users (5 female, 5 male), interviewed them and observed them while they were doing their training on the platform. Each visit lasted approximately two hours and included the observation, an interview, a standardized questionnaire and informal talks, sometimes also with husbands or wives of the test users. The visits were documented by audio-recordings, field notes, memory protocols and analytical notes afterwards. Staying at the user’s homes and observing their usage of the technical object and their training on the platform has brought their user behavior, their expectations and their problems to light and also their everyday usage of technology. This can provide insights into questions like: Where are they using the platform and when? How is their workplace designed and in which room or place is it installed? How do they train? And what does it mean to them? It also provides knowledge as to how they cope with technical problems of the program, which social factors influence the setting and the training and last but not least how they feel while participating in the program. Observing the users with these questions in mind and feeding back this information into the design process can enrich the designer’s knowledge about the concrete test users as well as prospective users they had and have in mind and make “previously neglected people and things” ([21] p. 379) visible.
During my participant observation two aspects became of particular interest: first, the test person’s use of the prototype in their everyday context, and, second, the usability problems they had to face while completing the training tasks.
The user behavior was characterized by intense repetition and consistency concerning time, place and surrounding. The users prefer to do their daily training at a certain time, in a specific place and in a familiar surrounding. This is especially surprising because one group was equipped with a tablet2[2] and could do the training wherever they wanted for example in the garden or on the terrace or in different rooms suitable to their favors. But in most occasions it was always the same room, the same seating-accommodation and the same sitting position. In addition, they preferred fixed training times, which they routinely repeated each day and sometimes also noted in their journal for their own purpose. And at last, they tried to evoke the same surrounding each time they did their training. For example, they turned off the bell or the telephone.
Comparable to the consistency of time, place and surrounding especially the tablet-users showed a certain hesitance when handling the artifact and had serious problems to navigate by touching the screen. Consequently, they routinized the interaction with the artifact as well. This means, they standardized their usage by fixing the position of keeping the tablet or they built up self-constructed holders since holding it in both hands made it impossible to touch the screen. They did not use the artefact spontaneously or explored its features rather they used it very carefully and did not test other programs or features of the training program. Consequently, not all features were discovered. For example a group-training with a supervisor was provided by the project but not all participants felt confident enough to take part in it. The same effect occurred regarding the chat forum. The test users seldom used the chat to ask for advice or to start a conversation with other test users.
Despite the careful approach, all of the participants were ambitious to solve the tasks correctly, to reach good results in the training and to fulfill their role as test-users conscientiously. This seriousness and liability is congruent to their reliable training behavior and their routine behavior.
Furthermore, almost all observed participants showed a very personalized use of the platform. They had special names for it with which they also communicated with the platform while they were doing their training. Or they produced individualized pads or other objects to embellish the tablet.
In regard to the group that trained on their own personal computers it is of interest where the computer is placed. In the majority of cases the computer is situated in the guest room, where the grand-children are sleeping while they are visiting their grandparents. Before the guest room became the guest room in a lot of cases it was the room where the children grew up. And although most of the users had a lot of free space in their households, their desks were always quite narrow and small.
In addition, the test users primarily had problems with the navigation through the platform as well as with exploring and understanding the functions of the single parts of the platform. More critical was the design of the training features. Here, it was difficult to detect symbols or pictures. The audibility was not satisfying and the program did not react in the expected manner. These problems occurred in both groups although especially the contrast of light against dark and the finger-based touch function made it difficult for the tablet group to solve the tasks the way they wanted.
Another and more critical point is the stability of the program itself. For the users it seemed to be intransparent, unpredictable and unsteady. Consequently, they raised their ambitions to reduce complexity by standardizing the way they used the program, the platform or the tablet. Their demand for control was not satisfied and therefore had to be met elsewhere for example by starting their own documentation of the training progress or by journalizing their training behavior.
But, these problems are due to the prototype version the users tested and therefore should be interpreted carefully. With further investment in the technical configuration these problems should disappear.
5 Design Challenges of AAL
Design for elderly persons is a great challenge that can only be tackled by taking interdisciplinary approaches into account. Integrating ethnographic methods is only one possible approach to widen the scope and raise the usability of the artifact but especially when designing for older users ethnographic methods can provide profound insights into the everyday lives of users. Taking users seriously requires not only an open-minded research group but also the capacities within the project to react to users’ interventions within the design process. Older users especially can be demanding test-persons. Particularly in technological domains they lack previous knowledge as well as experience with interactive and intelligent technologies. Thus, taking part in a research project that is explicitly about technology is a risky endeavor for them and should be taken into account by the project staff. It is not always easy to show one’s own inability especially if one is old. Therefore, a trustful relationship between project members and older test-users has to be developed not only to prevent dropouts during the test but also to create a relation in which experience can be shared easily and respectfully. Bringing an ethnographer on the scene can be a good strategy to build up such a relation, because the ethnographer is in-between as it was in my case: I was neither a member of the project staff nor a participant (although it was not always easy to sustain this role) and I had the time to visit the test users at home and staying with them while they carried out their training tasks. By taking this position I was able to build up a truthful atmosphere in which the test users could talk about their experience with the training, with the platform and the artifact. Furthermore, by staying in their homes I gained an impression about their living conditions in which the technology should be implemented. In my opinion, knowing their living conditions and their technical facilities and habits is crucial for the success of the technology on future markets. Simultaneously, my presence conveyed interest, attention and care for the older test users’ situation, feelings and experiences. Although this can be criticized as a bias of the research, it is in my opinion necessary for innovation processes in sensitive contexts like age and care. I want to exemplify this statement by discussing three aspects in more detail:
5.1 Dealing with Insecurity
The consistency of time, place and surrounding can be interpreted as the user’s ambition to turn something very unfamiliar into something familiar. By doing this familiarization something unknown can be integrated into one’s own lifeworld. This was a crucial step within the user-centered design process because without integration interaction cannot happen. It is necessary to know that older users perceive a lot of insecurity in their everyday lives and therefore, introduce unknown technical objects with time, sensitive towards their fears and worries and open to the overall topics like security, care or autonomy. Because the platform focuses on memory training, it is especially necessary to take the users experiences and comments seriously and try to integrate them in the design process.
5.2 Adoption Through Personalization
Being unfamiliar is also a motif that is important to understand the heterogeneous strategies of personalization. The test users showed a great variety of such strategies such as giving the program or the technical object a name, talking to it while doing the training, touching it tenderly or tinkering accessories to prettify the artifact. Common to those practices is the intention to get in touch with something unfamiliar. Integrating the object into the household means expressing acceptance and therefore raises the probability that the technology will be used.
5.3 Speaking the Same Language
Finding a common language is crucial for the later acceptance of new technology. Here the critical point is the on-set from where to start: Which kind of vocabulary is already established? Where are the interconnections between everyday expressions or symbols and technical terms? What has to be explained more precisely? Here, participant observation provides profound knowledge (also about what is not said during the test). Instruction manuals can help here, but can’t be the only advice and in the case of age-friendly technology they should be available easily as a printed version.
5.4 Focusing on Needs not on Possibilities
Technology-driven innovations are fast, attractive, ubiquitous. But in the context of AAL the users feel? more slow and vulnerable. Thus, it is indispensable to align the technical possibilities with the actual needs of older people. Assigning such a claim requires reflection on one’s work. If I was old, would I like to use this technology? And does it really solve my problems? Is it justifiable to bring technology to this field? Is it worth the cost? These questions have to be considered when designing age-friendly technology.
5.5 Black-box Age
Designing ambient technologies for older users is an ambitious and responsible task as ageing is a life-long process that differs between individuals depending on their resources to cope with the age-related changes. Gerontology and other disciplines concerning age and aging provide profound expertise that has to be considered when designing ICT for older users. Although most of the German and European AAL projects are based on interdisciplinary research groups, where expertise from every discipline concerning the research subject is represented, it is still challenging to build mutual understanding. For this, on the one hand disciplinary openness has to be the common ground for working together, but on the other a common understanding within the project has to be established. Hence it is necessary to carry out meetings, workshops, telephone or skype conferences to get to know and stay in touch with each other and to be forced to understand each other at least in the interest of creating a good project. That is to say for example, if a software engineer has the job to design a cognitive training program, that includes the task to discriminate different objects, it is necessary that the color contrast fits the requirements of an aged eye. For this, the engineer has to be informed about age-related changes in vision. In this case, style guides can be a useful advice for current as well for future projects [17].
Moreover, a reflexive position is needed as well. This means the project members have to feel responsible for their design action, since they are designing new technology for elderly users in a sensitive context where autonomy, privacy, self-determination and intimacy are contested. These ethical dimensions have to be considered in the design process. In order to ensure this, trainings and workshops are useful tools to raise awareness and reflect on one’s own responsibility [15]. Ethnography provides such reflexivity, since the reflection of one’s own position in the field and the influence of the research activities on the participants is of vital importance. Thus, the two questions mentioned above – Would I use this, when I am old? Should others use this for example to care for me, when I am old? – can support reflection and responsibility also in this case.
6 Conclusion
Taking ethnographic methods into consideration is one possible approach to widening the methodological scope of usability studies. As presented above, they can be useful tools for gaining information about the user and his or her everyday routines, practices, beliefs and habits by observing them in the so-called ‘real world’. Because the methods are presented in a very abbreviated way, their description in this article – on the one hand – can only provide a first glimpse of how to integrate ethnographic methods into the design for aging. But on the other hand, it can already give an impression of the possible intersections of ethnography and usability for example in the context of AAL.
But ethnography is more than just providing information about everyday activities of older users in their households. It goes beyond the obvious, the familiar and the capable. It accounts not only for the obvious matters of design for elderly but also asks who or what is missing and who or what is invisible in the design process. Susan Leigh Star explains it concisely: “Only by describing both the production task and the hidden task in articulation, together and recursively, can we come up with good analysis of why some systems work and others do not” ([21] p. 387). Especially in the context of AAL this is an important aspect. In this field, ethnography brings the participation of all stakeholders into the laboratory and beyond by making their agency visible and paves the way for future collaborations between ethnography and usability.
About the author
Cordula Endter, M. A. European Ethnology, Dipl. Psychology, is member of the scientific staff at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Hamburg. Her research is focusing on technology and age, gender and mobility.
References
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