Ethnography, workplace studies and design: the problem of communication

Since the late 1980s, and much to the surprise of many of its practitioners, ethnography has risen to a position of some prominence within CSCW research (Bentley et al., 1992; Hughes et al., 1994). This rise has not, of course, gone unchallenged; even from relatively sympathetic critics serious questions have been raised, and quite rightly, about the value of the approach in actually informing system design (see e.g. Plowman et al., 1995). Although this criticism is well taken, it does point to a problem recognised from the outset, namely, how are the results of ethnographic field studies to be conveyed to designers? In fact, there are a host of problems involving, for example, the scope of the design, the size of the design team, the stage of the design and more (see Hughes et al., 1994). Such communication problems have been at the heart of system design for some years even before ethnography and workplace studies came on the scene, and in this connection the ‘story’ related by Cooper et al. (1995) – though pertaining to designers and users – can be adapted to portray something of the state of affairs between fieldworkers and designers: