Ethnography – An Instrument to Teach PerspectivesBy Manoj Prasad, Dr. Tracy A. Hammond

BACKGROUND METHODS RESULTS

OBJECTIVES

Empathy Empathy is defined as the ability of a person to cognitively understand the state of another person.

Perception Taking skills and Emphatic concer fall under Empathy in Behavioral Psychology.

Participant Observation creates a situation in which the observer can exercise his Empathy (Situational Empathy).

User Interface is the component of the software that is visible to the user. It contains aspects of the system which allows complete control of the system. Input is used to allow users to manipulate the state of the system. Output is used to provide feedback the outcome of the actions performed by the user/ state of the system.

Computer Human Interaction is a field of Computer Science that specializes in identifying design principles for building good user interfaces. The design of a User Interface influences a user’s experience with a system. The goal of this field is to build interfaces that give users efficient and enjoyable experiences with the system.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank Dr. Robert Webb for his encouragement and support through out the project . I thank Gurlovleen Rathore for arranging the learning community among the TAR participants. I thank Ralph Crosby and Bernard Appiah for sharing their experience with their TAR project which helped me solve some problems I was dealing with my project.

LITERATURE CITED

• Cooper, A., “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity”, Sams - Pearson Education 2004.

• Baron-Cohen, S. & Wheelwright, S., “The Empathy Quotient: an investigation of adults with Asperger’s syndrome or high functioning autism, and normal sex differences”, Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders 2004.

• Davis, M.,”A multidimensional approach to individual differences in empathy”, Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology 1980.

• Hogan, R., “Development of an empathy scale”, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 1969.

• Mehrabian, A. & Epstein, N.,”A measure of emotional Empathy”. Journal of Personality 1972.

• Norman, D., “The Design of Everyday Things”, Basic Books 2002.

• Norman, D., “Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things”, USENIX Systems 2004.

• Overton, W., “The relationship between social and cognitive development”, LEA publishers 1983.

• Rodriguez , J., “The Adult Stages of Social Perspective-taking: Assessment with the Doctor-Patient Problem”, Doctoral thesis, Harvard University 1992.

• Selman, R., “The growth of interpersonal understanding”, Academic press 1980.

• Walter, M. , “Social Research Methods” , Oxford university press 2009.

What is an Ethnography?An ethnography is defined as study of people, widely used in anthropology. It is a formalized process of getting to know about a group, situation or process. Ethnographers use systematic and comprehensive collection of data, and gaining inferences from them. Field work is the most common method of collecting data. The ethnographers immerse themselves in the environment they study and collect data from them.

Teaching Instruments for User Perspective Taking

Objectives of this project• Ethnography - new instrument for teaching Computer

Human Interaction• Systematic Evaluation – No prior research in evaluating

Ethnography as an assignment in Computer Science• Assessing the Outcomes and Improving Learning

Experience

ContributionEmpathy - Tool to assess the impact of Ethnography

HypothesisParticipant Observation, along with other data collection tools, in an Ethnography assignment improves a Student’s Perception Taking Ability

If there is a increase in Student’s Empathy Index • Ethnographies can alter a person’s level of empathy• Students can learn to take the user’s perspective

which can lead to a better Interface Design.

The data was collected in three phases. One in September (pre – test), one in November after the assignment (post – test I) and one in December after the end of course (post – test II).

The IRI questionnaire was used to collect data about a student’s Emphatic Concern (EC) and Perspective Taking (PT).

Data Collected

• Four students showed positive change in Perspective Taking.

• Four students showed negative change in Perspective Taking

• The results failed to convince if the data is enough to arrive at a conlusion