Well well, here I am. I spent the last ten or so days writing myself up, so didn't have time to blogging. In fact, I didn't even think of this.
At the moment, my comments are:
- It is a very frustrating thing having to put all the experience one has in the field into a 12.000 words document. That is including all the protocol of a thesis.
- Having said that, I am in a moment of choice. I can either explain something really well, or lots of things superficially. In fact, I am trying to explain two things and not quite managing. So the solution could be to concentrate on one of them. But then questions about the quality and usefulness of my thesis arise, with that feeling of "so that is all I have been working so hard for?".
- On the other hand it has been a brilliant experience to play around with the English. Not my husband (who hasn't seen me for quite a while now), but the language. I am absolutely adoring the writing, no better satisfaction than the sound of a well written paragraph. I am not sure about my style, if it is academic enough,... I am sure I will edit over and over and over again.
- Distance is good. Every time I struggled with something, it was better to close the word window and do something else and then come back to that.
-
Monday 28 July 2008
Tuesday 8 July 2008
Tools
Tools can be a very, very distracting thing.
At the moment I am using HyperResearch to analyse my data, Freemind to organize my thinking and Omnigraffle (which was my friend Joahanna's recommendation) to put shape on things. I just wish that there was a way of doing them all together.
I wish HyperResearch had a graphic way of representing the connections of concepts. Couldn't they have just made a way to connect codes from different cases? Another big BIG frustration is that it doesn't like "cosmetics highlighting", meaning that you can't just highlight a quote or a passage of a text: you are obliged to code it if you want to retrieve it later. That forced me to create a code that is actually "highlights", which is ridiculous -- but a quite nice workaround. Now I can see why all those heated posts from those irritated researchers make sense: the software can indeed influence the shape of your analysis!
Now Omnigraffle is, for sure, the biggest distraction I had so far, with its little furniture shapes, and its cute colours and arrows.
This is why today was not be most productive of days. On the other hand, it was a nice day because I met Carly Stevens, a UCL MSc student like me and a very interesting person. She is doing research in electronic publishing, more specifically, she is investigating personalization and why it didn't really catch on.
At the moment I am using HyperResearch to analyse my data, Freemind to organize my thinking and Omnigraffle (which was my friend Joahanna's recommendation) to put shape on things. I just wish that there was a way of doing them all together.
I wish HyperResearch had a graphic way of representing the connections of concepts. Couldn't they have just made a way to connect codes from different cases? Another big BIG frustration is that it doesn't like "cosmetics highlighting", meaning that you can't just highlight a quote or a passage of a text: you are obliged to code it if you want to retrieve it later. That forced me to create a code that is actually "highlights", which is ridiculous -- but a quite nice workaround. Now I can see why all those heated posts from those irritated researchers make sense: the software can indeed influence the shape of your analysis!
Now Omnigraffle is, for sure, the biggest distraction I had so far, with its little furniture shapes, and its cute colours and arrows.
This is why today was not be most productive of days. On the other hand, it was a nice day because I met Carly Stevens, a UCL MSc student like me and a very interesting person. She is doing research in electronic publishing, more specifically, she is investigating personalization and why it didn't really catch on.
Thursday 3 July 2008
Design implications
It is incredibly refreshing to find a paper that terminates all your doubts: now you not only can justify yourself, you can say that there is someone else, out there, in the academic authority Olympus, who agrees with you.
I'm talking about the never-ending discussion about design implications for ethnographic research: to be or not to be?
One of the most mind-tearing, heart-squeezing, leg-shaking questions one can ask himself during the fieldwork is "what if I don't find any design implications??". Every time this evil question came to my mind during the days (or nights) at The Newspaper, my stomach felt funny.
And the reason for that is that you don't know until it is over. And, even when it is, it might be that you simply don't have anything specific to tell anyone. Yes, the main role of ethnographic work for CSCW research is to inform systems design, but trying to squeeze a list of things that need to be done in the end of a report might to asking to much from the researcher.
It might be that you just have an insight, and a solution for a problem is right in front of your nose: clear, objective ways of improving people's work, accompanied by a thorough analysis of why this or that innovation might work in this specific culture you just spent 3 months examining is obviously a good thing.
However, if a study describes a specific work setting in detail, giving a sound, thorough account of how those people do what they do every day explaining what works what doesn't work and why it doesn't can be already a good contribution to a corpus of study.
Lydia Plowman, Yvonne Rogers and Magnus Ramage agree with me. According to them:
"...workplace studies carried out primarily to understand a particular working practice are making a valuable contribution to the body of CSCW knowledge in their own right As pointed out in the section on basic research such studies can inform CSCW design through raising awareness of important conceptual issues and questioning taken-for-granted assumptions about work activities and how they should be supported. In essence, 'the main virtue of ethnography is its ability to make visible the 'real world' sociality of a setting' (Hughes et ai, 1994).
They also say that:
1. researchers should not feel obliged to force design implications from their material;
2. researchers and designers should engage more in a continuous dialogue to help bridge the gap and misunderstandings between 'techno-talk' and 'ethno-talk';
3. workplace studies for 'their own sake' have played an important role in shaping CSCW and should continue to be supported unfettered to provide further insight into the social, the cognitive and the technical aspects of work.
I couldn't agree more. When I first heard this argument -- from my supervisor's mouth, before starting my fieldwork -- I had the impression that this was somehow connected to lazyness. Yes, I did my friends, I thought that. For me it seemed quite reasonable that the researcher should also come up with the design solution for any problems they find in the field.
And that is the mindset behind much of the research we see today: researchers go to the field so obsessed with finding "what's wrong" that it is difficult to believe that the bulk of qualitative research today isn't biased.
Anyway, this is enough discussion. I made my point, I guess. :)
I'm talking about the never-ending discussion about design implications for ethnographic research: to be or not to be?
One of the most mind-tearing, heart-squeezing, leg-shaking questions one can ask himself during the fieldwork is "what if I don't find any design implications??". Every time this evil question came to my mind during the days (or nights) at The Newspaper, my stomach felt funny.
And the reason for that is that you don't know until it is over. And, even when it is, it might be that you simply don't have anything specific to tell anyone. Yes, the main role of ethnographic work for CSCW research is to inform systems design, but trying to squeeze a list of things that need to be done in the end of a report might to asking to much from the researcher.
It might be that you just have an insight, and a solution for a problem is right in front of your nose: clear, objective ways of improving people's work, accompanied by a thorough analysis of why this or that innovation might work in this specific culture you just spent 3 months examining is obviously a good thing.
However, if a study describes a specific work setting in detail, giving a sound, thorough account of how those people do what they do every day explaining what works what doesn't work and why it doesn't can be already a good contribution to a corpus of study.
Lydia Plowman, Yvonne Rogers and Magnus Ramage agree with me. According to them:
"...workplace studies carried out primarily to understand a particular working practice are making a valuable contribution to the body of CSCW knowledge in their own right As pointed out in the section on basic research such studies can inform CSCW design through raising awareness of important conceptual issues and questioning taken-for-granted assumptions about work activities and how they should be supported. In essence, 'the main virtue of ethnography is its ability to make visible the 'real world' sociality of a setting' (Hughes et ai, 1994).
They also say that:
1. researchers should not feel obliged to force design implications from their material;
2. researchers and designers should engage more in a continuous dialogue to help bridge the gap and misunderstandings between 'techno-talk' and 'ethno-talk';
3. workplace studies for 'their own sake' have played an important role in shaping CSCW and should continue to be supported unfettered to provide further insight into the social, the cognitive and the technical aspects of work.
I couldn't agree more. When I first heard this argument -- from my supervisor's mouth, before starting my fieldwork -- I had the impression that this was somehow connected to lazyness. Yes, I did my friends, I thought that. For me it seemed quite reasonable that the researcher should also come up with the design solution for any problems they find in the field.
And that is the mindset behind much of the research we see today: researchers go to the field so obsessed with finding "what's wrong" that it is difficult to believe that the bulk of qualitative research today isn't biased.
Anyway, this is enough discussion. I made my point, I guess. :)
Wednesday 2 July 2008
A step ahead
Yesterday was my last day in the newspaper, and it was a great one. I felt sorry for leaving... not only I got used to those people, I even liked them. I think they liked me too. It is a strange thing a fieldwork ... you create bonds with people, you know what they are thinking, what they are doing, the way they move, ... and then you go. It's almost heartbreaking.
But well, now it is writing time. I found that:
- It is almost irresistible not to start drawing conclusions about what you found. The "data analysis" that must happen during the data gathering didn't happen for me in any formal way, i.e., I didn't code any data before the end of the fieldwork, as you are supposed to do, but I believe I did a sort of analysis by writing up the summaries for each day and comparing things from one day to another. How I am going to explain this in the theses is another subject.
- In many many ways, ethnography is like making a long news story. You go there, you listen to what the people have to say, you ask questions, you make notes, you transcribe tapes, and then you come back to the office with the hint, that feeling that you know what the lead of the story is, but you need to check the transcriptions again, see if you are not jumping ahead with conclusions, and you check with your editor what he thinks (that's Simon, in a way) and then you seat down and write the story. There is always the "uh, am I sure this is the lead? Did I get this right?" question you ask yourself, but in 99.999% of the times, you are spot on.
The difference here is that, as a reporter, if you are not right about the lead you will get to know the day after when you read the other newspapers. And what a horrible feeling that is...
If you are a researcher, nobody will know if you missed the lead or not, because is pretty much your choice, it depends on what the data tell you, but also how you want to look at it, and from which angle you want to describe what you saw.
So being an ethnographer, for me, is like a step ahead: it is journalism with choice, thought and freedom. I think I love it! (godforbidsomeonereadsthis!)
But well, now it is writing time. I found that:
- It is almost irresistible not to start drawing conclusions about what you found. The "data analysis" that must happen during the data gathering didn't happen for me in any formal way, i.e., I didn't code any data before the end of the fieldwork, as you are supposed to do, but I believe I did a sort of analysis by writing up the summaries for each day and comparing things from one day to another. How I am going to explain this in the theses is another subject.
- In many many ways, ethnography is like making a long news story. You go there, you listen to what the people have to say, you ask questions, you make notes, you transcribe tapes, and then you come back to the office with the hint, that feeling that you know what the lead of the story is, but you need to check the transcriptions again, see if you are not jumping ahead with conclusions, and you check with your editor what he thinks (that's Simon, in a way) and then you seat down and write the story. There is always the "uh, am I sure this is the lead? Did I get this right?" question you ask yourself, but in 99.999% of the times, you are spot on.
The difference here is that, as a reporter, if you are not right about the lead you will get to know the day after when you read the other newspapers. And what a horrible feeling that is...
If you are a researcher, nobody will know if you missed the lead or not, because is pretty much your choice, it depends on what the data tell you, but also how you want to look at it, and from which angle you want to describe what you saw.
So being an ethnographer, for me, is like a step ahead: it is journalism with choice, thought and freedom. I think I love it! (godforbidsomeonereadsthis!)
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