An Ethnodesign Approach to Designing Data Exchanges and Tools

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Much has been made of the ‘benefits’ of combining ethnography and design in terms of the developments of products and strategies. In a research centre, particularly one that creates both qualitative and quantitative data, and combines academic and industrial interests, the approach that ‘ethnodesign’ collaboration takes to the data it generates must be explicitly considered. The Technology Research for Independent Living (TRIL) Centre in Ireland, which includes Intel and Irish Universities, is a multi-sited, multi-disciplinary research collaboration that is addressing physical, cognitive, and social aspects of ageing. Now in its third year, ethnographers, designers, and other researchers are asking how they can maximise the value of their unusual array of qualitative and quantitative data by designing the processes of storing, sharing, connecting, and visualising their data. How can we allow our data to become greater and more useful than the sum of its parts? We believe that bringing data together a way is a design problem, and because of the pairing of ethnography and design in mediating the production of data within TRIL, it is also a question that needs an ethnodesign approach. In this paper, we explore what such a claim means and what the ethnodesign process, end-use visualisations, and tools might look like.

Stream: Design Research

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Jessamine Dana is research fellow at the Ethnographic Research Unit of the Irish Centre for Social Gerontology at the National University of Galway and the TRIL (Technology Research for Independent Living) Centre, where she is associated with the TRIL Centre's Cognitive Function Strand. Having completed an ethnographic internship with Intel's Digital Health Group, she is in completion of her D.Phil in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Oxford University, from whom she also holds an M.Phil in Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography. In addition to her work with the Cognitive Strand's projects, Jessamine is researching elders' existing strategies for coping with and/or preventing cognitive decline, as well as issues around compliance and the acceptability of technological intervention. This work is being undertaken in collaboration with TRIL's technology designers and engineers. She is also developing data archiving and visualisation tools for linking qualitative and quantitative data. Her interests include applied anthropology, technology, phenomenology, design, and human-computer interaction.