Paper Reading 1: Thereʼs Methodology in the Madness: Toward Critical HCI Ethnography

Comments
Patrick Frith
Steven Hennessy

Reference Information
There’s Methodology in the Madness: Toward Critical HCI Ethnography
 - Amanda Williams and Lilly Irani
 - CHI 2010, Atlanta, Georgia

Summary
This paper discusses the classical methods of HCI research, and how new emerging fields might cause a revamping of these methods.  These kinds of changes are compared to how anthropological studies and methods also had to change when the old ways no longer matched up with the current times.  A large part of this was realizing the various minute details of a study that can affect the outcome.  One point that was made was how the observer’s mood and disposition could potentially change the way he/she interprets what he/she is studying.  They also discussed viewing the user differently in order to recognize new possibilities in testing and design.

Discussion
Let me first say that I am not a big fan of reading technical papers.  It’s not that I think they are useless, but they are usually geared towards a very specific audience, and I am rarely in this audience.  This usually makes it difficult for me to connect to or even understand the message of the paper.  HCI seems to be an interesting topic for sure, but I just had a difficult time in making much sense of this paper.  However, one idea did manage to grab me, so I have more to say than commenting on my lack of relating to verbose technical papers.  And yes, I realize I can be too verbose myself.

What...is going on...

They discussed briefly about making the familiar strange versus making the strange familiar, and this immediately made me think of interface design.  The first idea of making the familiar strange seems like taking the human race and viewing them as a foreign group of users.  This views the users as vastly different from the designer.  While this is true in many ways, this method would most likely result in undesirable design decisions for the user.

But this is not what the writers were supporting it seemed to me.  They pointed out that making the strange familiar could help recognize new possibilities.  I interpreted this as thinking more like the user and trying as best as we can to dismiss assumptions we might have as designers.  This might appear obvious, but still, this is a good point.  I am sure everyone can recall at least one time where you were using a program and thought, “What were they thinking?!”  Or in some cases, you wondered if they had even tested the software at all for user compatibility.

While the user can be quite different from the designer in knowledge, it should not be forgotten to relate to them when making a design.  And it also makes sense to create a design with built-in familiarity.  Using next-generation technology can be wonderful, but not if the user needs to learn the ins and outs of it just to enjoy it.  It’s the designer’s job to conveniently bring this technology to the users so they continue to want us around, and not to lose touch with the purpose of HCI in the first place.  And thanks for bearing with me in case I completely lost the point of this paper.