An ethnomethodological approach to the early stages of product design practice.

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the use of ethnographically orientated methodologies to understandthe identification of customer needs within product design. Within the ethnographicmechanism there are various theories and affiliations that can be employed to researchthe practice of designing. This paper looks at three theories, activity theory (AT),grounded theory (GT) and ethnomethodology (EM). It will be proposed that an EMapproach is an appropriate mechanism for understanding and analysing the earlieststages of product design. Keywords: ethnography, ethnomethodology, product design process 1 INTRODUCTION Since the early 1990s, computer science and design research has heralded the “return tothe social” [1]. It has been proposed that within the field of HCI, for example, there hasbeen a series of stages progressing from a fourth stage (the user), to a fifth stage (thesocial/organizational). Luff et al argue that failure of technologies often derives from notunderstanding people in organizational environments, and requirements gathering needsto look more at the “social” [2]. This social consideration has led to methods andtechniques from the social sciences being applied to the design process. Ethnography isone such technique and has been used in its own right but has also been applied totheoretical frameworks such as EM, GT and AT. This paper evaluates these theories inregard to how well they could be applied to product design. EM, with its focus on socialinteraction, is an appropriate method for investigating the identification of customerneeds in product design.