Ethnography in Participatory Design

Even the most cursory glance through recent proceedings of the biannual participatory design conference shows that ethnography is becoming an increasingly widespread technique in work-oriented design. This paper (1) explicates the rationale behind participatory design’s ‘turn to ethnography’; (2) identifies central problems with the technique’s employment from participatory design’s point of view; (3) presents methodological solutions developed in the course of designing a prototype supporting the work activities of some 2500 potential end-users distributed in over 250 offices around the world. Emphasis is placed on attention to working language as a reproducible means of getting hands-on work and organisation, particularly in large-scale settings.

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