Presentation + Plans

So, had my presentation about the project today and the fact that, even after preparing it I found it difficult to express what they outcomes of it could be is worrying.

Also had a meeting with Simon -- which was nice, given that I will start at The Newspaper on Monday! :O

We agreed:

1. On my first day I should be concentrating on finding out who I can talk to. That could in through talks with the two gatekeepers I identified. For that, I need to tell them what I am looking for, which leads us to point 2:
2. I will prepare a "one sentence explanation" of what I want to know. That could be in the format "I am interested in understanding...". From what I had the chance to talk so far it is basically: "I would like to understand how is the process of writing for the web and for the paper editions", so they can point me in the direction of seeing the people who make this process happen
3. We talked again about AT and I felt more confident in explaining it to Simon, specially the 3rd generation approach. He seems to see some sense in what I say, but I don't think he is entirely convinced though. Will finish that theoretical considerations document and send it to him. But he emphasized how I shouldn't be slaved by the theory, that I am good in eliciting data, finding out things and talking to people, so in his view ethnography is not that different from journalism. I couldn't disagree with him more on that point, but I understand what he means by being more "free" about how I look at this setting.
4.We agreed on a weekly meeting, on Fridays, to discuss my progress. That made me feel safer. And he also said I shouldn't feel like I'm bothering him at all
5. I am nervous and I can't relax, even if this is a fantastic thing to be able to do, I can't relax. I think I will feel better if I write more about the AT thing and think through this better.
6. Simon says that member checking is a good idea, but not the "continuous writing" idea. So I won't be writing stuff during the collection of data.
7. I need to reply to Kari Kuutti.
8. The gatekeeper didn't reply to my email. If he doesn't say anything until tomorrow morning I will write again.

IM and AT

I was running around the web trying to find some illumination for my ACS exam question about cultural influences in design and I bumped into the Interaction Culture blog. She, or he, I couldn't get it, has a tag dedicated to Activity Theory and even does an experiment on looking at Instant Messenger from an AT perspective. It is a good example how it is possible to do an AT analysis, that is of course, not very deeply rooted into the whole Russian-Scandinavian philosophical discourse, but that helps designers -- as the Mr. or Mrs. from the blog -- to understand what people do with a tool.

Also found another book by Nardi and Kaptelinin "Acting with Thechnology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design". It seems quite good and a reviewer say that they give practical examples of application of the theory model in real design situations. That's what I am looking for.

Back to the methodological hell I am in

Problems I have at the moment with convincing myself that AT is a good framework for my study:

- Studies explore the "developing" feature of activity theory from an education perspective: how users acquire knowledge about the technology they use, how they go from being novices to being experts, how their actions evolve into (automatic ) operations and how design can support this transition. Mainly derived from Engërstrom line of thought in AT. THIS IS NOT MY CASE, there is no new technology being introduced at the moment at The Newspaper.

- Studies that focus on AT as a framework to inform design by providing a structure of analysis. THIS IS NOT MY CASE EITHER, because I am not designing anything for The Newspaper at the moment, no NEED for a new system was expressed. This could change as I get in there, I might realize that there is space for a new system and the company is interested, for example, in unifying the content management systems. I have been relying secretly on this possibility, so I decided to make explicit, because it is an enormous bias I can get myself into. Don't think like this!

-I am not studying how artifacts change with activity, nor how can activity change with the introduction of new artefacts. Does this tell me something?

- I wrote to Kari Kuutti in a desperate attempt to find light.

The New New Journalism

Went to an Innovation Forum talk yesterday, the "New new journalism". Interesting to be in a room full of journalists again, but not very interesting conversation. Lots of the old "we need reporters instead of people with phone cameras", and "we must seek the absolute truth" and stuff. Not very interesting from the design point of view either, I didn't get much from it.
Charlie Beckett (who just published his book "Super Media") in his defense of a brighter future to "the journalism we can all do", said some interesting things about "public searches" -- I guess that pretty much the same as crowd sorting, like the people who scrutinized satellite pictures to find the guy who got lost in the desert. Interesting point of view on "crowdfunding" to journalism.
A bit of a waste of time for my project, as didn't get the chance to talk about technology at work, they all seemed more interested in technology for the masses: blogs, videos, twitters, etc, etc. Good to catch up with general facts (or more like general opinion) conversation.

What is compelling about using a theoretical approach in a theses?

The way I see the question about using a theoretical framework or not compares to the trip to an unknown city. If I have never been to a place before, I have two choices: the first alternative is to get a map of the city and study it to find out where are the things I would like to do and see, the places I would like to visit – and likewise to find out the ones I am not interested in and how to avoid them. The other alternative is I forget the map and just explore the city freely and let myself be charmed by it.

There are obvious advantages and disadvantages to each way and I will have different experiences depending on which one I choose: without the guide I might be surprised by the different things I find on my journey, and even become acquainted with things I never knew that existed or that were located in those places, or in that city. I might even have a richer experience by letting one place lead to another and making a path of my own, which would be a very special and unique trip. However, there is the risk I will leave the city thinking: was there anything else there that I could have found very interesting and I didn’t see? Or worse even: did I just miss the best thing in town?

On the other hand, with the guide I can make sure I visit the places and things I would like to see, I can make my judgment if that was interesting or not. But I will also be aware of the points of the city I haven’t been and draw conclusions of why I didn’t go: because I was not interested or because I spent my time enjoying one particular place or attraction I had planned to visit. It can be more of a boring way of seeing things, but at least I won’t come back with the feeling of missing something,.

However trivial this metaphor may be, I think it helps me explain why I am interested in making use of a theoretical framework in this research: according to Wolcott (1995) the choosing to use or not a theoretical framework is ultimately a question of personal taste. For this matter, I am more of guide a sort of person.

It is clear that this top-down approach to field research contradicts much of what the inventors of Grounded Theory and preachers of inductive methods in general would see as the correct thing to do: for them, the emergence of theory from raw data is what creates theory. However, I don’t believe that complementing the bottom up approach with a theoretical structure can be disadvantageous from a practical point of view of a study that needs to be focused, specific and concluded in a short period of time.

I don’t see Activity Theory, or CHAT as a straight jacket to which fieldwork is supposed to fit, but as a guide to what areas I could be interested in looking within the limits of my research. Quite the opposite, I don’t intend to adapt the fieldwork to it: the theory is supposed to serve the purpose of the research, not to slave it.

Grounded Theory (again)

Interesting text by Cutcliffe, J.R. "Methodological issues in grounded theory":

- He proposes a combination of the methods proposed - separately - by Glaser and Strauss. He says that any attempt of a purist approach to the method can only constrain the gathering of data.

- However, he advocates the strict definition and execution of the methodology once it is chosen. Not being able to describe the method used for the gathering/analysis of data is, according to him, one of the greatest weaknesses of grounded theorists.

- He is in favour of pre-field revision of literature and use of researcher's background knowledge -- for what Glaser's must be turning in his thumb. Fair point: if the researcher doesn't know what has been written about the matter of investigation, how can he possibly know what to look at. Some minimal direction must be taken.

- Understandably so, Cutcliffe doesn't seem to think that researchers should choose their informants before the observations take place. But he does think that an activity that can -- and should -- take place before the observation period starts is the definition of criteria to choose the informants. What should informants have or be to be good informants for this specific research? Generally, informants are people who have content knowledge about the phenomenon being studied and who are willing to talk. However, each field and each research questions turns itself to one -- or more -- people in the field, and these are the informants for this specific study. POINT TO THINK ABOUT.

- Insists in the importance of doing theoretical coding as well as substantial coding. According to him, substantial coding are called this because they codify the substance of the data and often use the very words used by the actors themselves. I think I am on the right way for this one. What about theoretical coding? Is it categorizing?

This article was published on the Journal of Advanced Nursing, in 2000. Funny eh?

About using video

I read Jirotkas manual about it and also a couple of other things and my considerations are:

- It is true that in the long term video is a powerful tool, because it can store a moment for further consultation. If I am doing a PhD to build on this work, this might be a good idea.

- On the other side, video is a very difficult thing to analyse. And I have no training on that. I might be trying to bite more than I can chew.

- More than difficult, analising video takes a long time. And I don't have a long time now.

I will discuss it with Simon at our meeting this week.

Also meeting Paul Luff on Wednesday, at Kings College.

Conversations

Great day yesterday! Met Marina Jirotka for a chat near Paddington station and it was very fruitful. She told me about her research in the City and how she did it. Highlights from conversation:

- She is not a very big fan of Activity Theory or of any theory really. She thinks they are not very useful and she never used them anyway.

- She gave me a print out of her to be published book - Notes towards applied Ethnography, which basically contains a lot of what I was going to ask her in the first place

- She reckons I should use a camera in my observations at The Newspaper. She believes it gives you a security of a resource that you can consult even after the observations.

- She thinks it is a good idea if I don't tell anyone about the fact I am a journalist myself.

- She advised me to talk to Kari Kuuti if I am really interested in Activity Theory. I shall do so.
She also advised me to talk to Paul Luff, who did an ethnography in a radio station in London.

- She is a great woman and really fun to talk to!

PS: It's sunny and I found dulce de leche at the supermarket! Yehyeeee!

design interactions, not applications

Among my readings of the weekend, the paper by Saul Greenberg, who revisits the concept of context and analyzes why designers find it so difficult to build context awareness applications.

He gives a brief explanation of three theories of context: Situated Actions, (our most beloved) Activity Theory and another approach I have never heard of before, the "locales framework".

According to the author "the Locales framework was developed as a principled approach to help people understand the nature of social activity and work, and how a locale (or place) can support these activities ... In many ways, the Locales framework is about the social construction and use of context, and it too recognizes its dynamic properties. Locales (the site and means) are the external contributors to context; although locales can be fixed, most are fluid.

His overall argument, though, is more interesting: if in many cases some contextual situations are fairly stable, discernible and predictable, there are many others that are not.

That implies that 1) it may be impossible to determine an appropriate set of canonical states of context 2) determining what information is necessary to infer a contextual state may be difficult and 3) determining an appropriate action from a given context may be difficult, because the kind of responses that people expect from a context-aware application are very situation-dependable.

So here I must agree with Suchman when she says that human beings don't plan anything: they just react. We do, we are opportunistic creatures who optimize the path to accomplish a task that will require the least effort.

From his brief description of the "context theories", general perceptions arise:

- interactions evolve over time, therefore the historical character of activity is relevant for understanding the interaction

- people have particular views of the same things (or places, or practices) so the individual's history counts when analyzing a context

- artefacts are the media by which people achieve goals, they are not (or shouldn't be) the goal itself


We should aim to design interactions, not applications.

Coding

Difficult day after a long break (bank holiday). I managed to do some reading during the weekend, but didn't succeed much in concentrating.

Today I read Strauss & Corbin, Chapter 8 on "Open Coding", all about phenomena, concepts, categories, subcategories, properties and dimensions. We give names to phenomena, transforming them into concepts so we can make sense of them, compare them, group them and analyze them, and in the end, make theory out of them. When we put names on things we fix our attention on them and ask questions about them. This is why coding is important.

I was not entirely convinced by Strauss and Corbin's arguments and even less clear about how to do it. So I gave it a go and did it to the data (interview) I collected at The Newspaper last week. I am not quite sure about how accurate my understanding is, but as I told Simon: the advantage of researching versus doing journalism is that with research you don't find out that you had the long lead by reading all the other newspapers the morning after. In research you are all the other newspapers and even better: you can come back and re-write the lead if you find out it is wrong.

A little 45 dgrees difference

Just a comic note: I was very amused to find this book in the library today:

Pink, Sarah.: Doing visual ethnography : images, media and representation in research / Sarah Pink.. 2nd ed.. London : SAGE, 2007..

There she is, Dr. Pink, interested in how images can be introduced in the ethnographic analysis, published author and good writer (you have to be if you are an ethnographer, right?)
Funny!

I might write to her...

First impressions... 'blink' rules

Had first taste of The Newspaper today. Some interesting findings, some confusing ones. They are in the middle of an "integration process" between the online and the paper editions. This can be good and bad news. It can be good to watch that happen, it can be bad because I will just miss it by a month. To catch it still "separate" I would have to start there tomorrow.

According to the "integration project leader" - to whom I talked today -- regarding my question about how the journalists work is divided he said that there isn’t a division to write in one and not in the other ...that distinction has really drindled away.

That leads us to the question: so it did exist one day?

Yes, we did for a period, and it is not entirely integrated, we did have a period where they worked for the online only, but that distinction is now pretty much gone. There is still a little bit of that in “news” but things are changing, we will soon rearrange part of the newsroom so some of those guys will be re-housed, this distinction we will get away from. They are reporters for The Newspaper and that’s it.

The whole thing is part of a big structure re-organization that happened when the new editor took over last year. He created a position called "head of news", who is "a crossing platform", is "the director of traffic on both sides" and "roles the ship".

Now here is where we get interesting: The journalists just write the text and deliver it "raw" to the sub-editors. These guys are the ones who are going to cut it and dress it to the different outlets: print or online.

Also had the chance of watching the morning editorial meeting, which is pretty crazy for an outsider. I tried not to get bogged down with things I already know, like what is the document they all follow, and how these meetings are generally. The strange thing, I realized, is that I have always participated of these meetings by phone, never live.

It is exciting to watch people. It was also difficult to take notes of the "what was happening" instead of the "content". There were times I started taking notes about the stories they were discussing, as if I were in a press conference.

Tried to identify people by what they were saying and match it to what they were wearing -- a silly attempt of remembering them latter). I have good face recognition features and spent time trying to fix their faces in my head.

Lots of questions in mind. Lots of note taking. Lots of reporting back. Created a flow chart of the "life of a story" as of these first of today.

Will get the chance of another interview, this time with another guy who is quite senior (but wasn't at the editorial meeting today)

Uf, it's happening. I can't scape!

PS: strangely enough I read an article about this book Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, which I read sometime ago, and talks about the power of first impressions. They do!