User Interface Design G64UID Andy Crabtree [email protected] Slides available @ axc/G64UID/Work_Analysis.pdf ‘Work’ Analysis … or doing

User Interface DesignG64UID

Andy Crabtree [email protected]

Slides available @ www.mrl.nott.ac.uk/~axc/G64UID/Work_Analysis.pdf

‘Work’ Analysis… or doing ethnography for systems design



Learning Outcomes (1)

• A basic understanding of what ethnography is and its role in design

• Key features of work:- User tasks- Cooperative work- The ecology of work

• The basics of doing a design ethnography (CW1. 2000-3000 word study report; 30% of overall course mark)



Overview

• The origins of ethnography in social science

• Ethnography in systems design- Air Traffic Control (ATC), an example- ATC and key features of work

• Doing an ethnography yourself - key things to look for when doing your coursework



What is Ethnography?

• Social anthropology and the study of people who live in far away places

• Invented by Bronislaw Malinowski circa 1922 as a method of doing anthropology by fieldworkcf. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific

• Transformed anthropology from the study of travellers’ accounts to immersion in a culture



The Purpose of Ethnography

• To “grasp the native’s point of view”

• To do so “it is necessary, not only to note down those occurrences and details which are prescribed by tradition and custom to be the essential course of the act, but also the ethnographer ought to record carefully and precisely, one after the other, the actions of the actors”

• Two important requirements for grasping the native’s point of view then:- Traditions and customs (laws, rules, procedures, routines, etc.) are not

sufficient - we need also to record the actions whereby they are done- Record fundamentally means “note down” or describe



Ethnographic Analysis

• Two major features of analysis for Malinowski: a) the “organized social construction” of the activities observedb) the “sociological function” of those organized constructions

• An example of a) a queue in a shop is socially constructed by those wishing to buy goods through the assembly of a service line which displays the order of service from who is next to who is last in line

• An example of b) a queue is a socially organized construction that functions to provide the orderly buying of goods



Ethnography Today

• Malinowski’s analytic functionalism is no longer accepted

• Based on a biological metaphor that cut across the social sciences and justified large scale social institutions by their alleged function; rejected as ‘conservative’, reinforcing status quo

• b) has thus been replaced by other theoretical concerns that seek to explain concrete social phenomena



Empirical Ethnography

• As does analysing fieldwork accounts (descriptions) to uncover the ways in which the activities observed are organized and socially constructed by those who do them

• a) remains as an empirical concern then and provides an alternate to theoretical ethnography - we are interested only in empirical ethnography here

• The method remains though - i.e. accounting for human activities by immersion in a setting and describing the actions of the actors who carry them out



Bringing Ethnography Home

• Chicago School of Sociology started using ethnography to study our own culturecf. Prus, Symbolic Interaction and Ethnographic Research

• Students sent out on to the streets to study urban life direct - immersion in a culture becomes immersion in a setting of organized activities (e.g., hustling, policing the streets, following the prison code, etc.)

• Thus, ethnography requires a researcher to immerse him or herself in the work of a setting in order to empirically uncover how the setting’s activities are socially organized and constructed



Ethnography and Design

• Same purpose (describe what people do in a setting and how they organize/construct it), different role: instead of explanation, working out what-to-build

• Ethnography appropriated by design as a method supporting “requirements elicitation and specification”cf. Anderson, Work, Ethnography and System Design

• Various configurations- Quick and dirty (us)- Concurrent- Evaluative- Re-examination of studiescf. Hughes et al. Moving Out of the Control Room



Design and the Sociality of Work

• Why must we focus on the social construction and organization of work; why is it necessary?

• Because systems are embedded in social circumstances and thus used not only by individuals but by individuals-working-together

• Need to attend to how people construct and organize their work together then so that we can design systems that support the sociality of work



“Faltering from Ethnography to nDesign”• A practical example: UK Air Traffic Control

(ATC)

• One of the first and most notable ethnographic studies done for the purposes of systems design; informed prototype of a new ATC systemcf. Hughes et al. Faltering from Ethnography to Design

• Examine it to unpack key features of the sociality of work



UK Air Traffic Control

• Run by National Air Traffic Services (NATS), which handles all flights in UK airspace and over the eastern part of the North Atlantic

• + 2.4 million flights per year handled at 3 main ATC centres at Swanwick, Manchester, and Prestwick

• International flights to or crossing England and Wales were handled at West Drayton until 2002 when ATC moved to Swanwick



ATC at West Drayton

• Airspace divided in 16 sectors

• Each sector controlled by 2 air traffic controllers, 2 assistants, and 1 sector chief

• Used radar, radio telephones, and flight strips to keep planes apart and order the skies



Ordering the Skies …

• … is the primary task of air traffic control

• It is done by “building a picture” of the skies: of the traffic within a sector, of flight paths through it, of varying plane performances across it, of potential conflicts, of the next sector en route, and so on

• The question is: how is that picture built and updated moment-by-moment to provide for the real time ordering of the skies?



Building a Picture of the Skies (1)• Radar not sufficient; a ‘thin’ visualization that can it fail

• ‘Thicker’ complementary set of information provided by flight strip:

“From your strips you can find out whether or not there is a possible confliction and what you can do about it. You then go to your radar and look for that particular aircraft and see where it is in reference to the outbound from Heathrow, for example … Then you decide what you’re going to do with it.” Controller



Building a Picture of the Skies (2)

• Not just ‘read off’ the basic flight strip information

• Information on the flight strips is continuously annotated and updated by sector staff, e.g.,- Assistants routinely check and correct basic flight strip information - Controllers mark them to show that they are “live”- Sector chiefs replace live strips with more up-to-date ones

• Each member of staff uses a different colour of pen so that the changes can quickly be tracked to source



Building a Picture of the Skies (3)

• Not only ‘read off’ the annotated flight strips but the physical arrangement of the flight strips in the work environment, e.g.,

• Physical placement of flight strips represents the temporal flow of planes through a sector

• The physical environment is a key ingredient in building a picture of and reflexively ordering the skies

- Assistants place strips in a pending rack and order them as next in an unfolding sequence

- Controllers place strips in a live rack, again ordered by next in sequence- Any member of staff may “cock out” strips in either sequentially ordered rack to

indicate potential conflicts at-a-glance



Creating Order in the Skies



Key Features of Work (1)

• For purposes of design work may be characterised as a task undertaken by users of a current or potential computer system

• The ATC study instructs us that 1) the user task is composed of a collection of sub-tasks- e.g., ordering the skies -> building a picture of the skies ->

annotating flight strips -> physically ordering flight strips

• Furthermore, sub-tasks consist of constitutive actions- e.g., ordering flight strips -> place in pending rack -> place in live

rack -> cock out to show conflict




• Task accomplishment is not the sole responsibility of an individual

• The ATC study instructs us that task accomplishment is distributed across a working division of labour- e.g., across assistants, controllers, and sector chiefs

• The working division of labour is produced in 2) the cooperative work of its distributed cohorts- e.g., in assistants checking and annotation of flight strips, in

controllers making strips live, in section chiefs updating strips, and so on




• The ATC study also instructs us that task accomplishment is embedded or situated in the physical environment

• The physical environment is not merely a container for work, it is actively exploited by people in their cooperative work for the purposes of task accomplishment

• Task accomplishment is thus rooted in 3) the ecology of work- i.e., in the cooperative manipulation of the physical arrangements a

setting is constructed of



Summary

• Ethnography a method of doing fieldwork in anthropology and sociology- Immersion in a setting, description of action, analysis of descriptions for their

socially constructed and organized features

• Appropriated as a means of requirements capture by design- Systems embedded in social circumstances and used by people-working-

together

• Do design ethnographies by describing and analysing the socially constructed and organized ways in which work is accomplished- User tasks, cooperative work, ecology of work



DIY Ethnography - The Basics

• Find and immerse yourself in fieldwork setting (CW1. 2000-3000 word work analysis, 30% of overall mark, 1 of 3 settings)

• Describe the work activities observed in details of the actions of actors who are involved in the work

• Pay specific attention to and analyse descriptions for:- 1. User tasks and sub-tasks- 2. The arrangements of cooperative work involved in task accomplishment- 3. The ways in which the ecology of work is exploited in task accomplishment



CW1. Structure of the Report

• A two page executive summary: where you went, what you did, what you found

• A detailed requirements specification based on work analysis of the setting studied

• Justification for the specification:- Description of the approach taken- The methods used and why they were used- The difficulties encountered, limitations of the approach, and

next steps if any



CW. Group Work

• Report written by a group (5 members)

• Report does not = filling in the tables: use them to identify those things that need to be in your report

• 5 ‘work analysis tables’ to help structure writing:- Table 1. Project Summary (what, why, for who, how, benefits, limitations)- Table 2. User task characteristics (task and sub-tasks)- Table 3. Cooperative work characteristics (division of labour and arrangements

of cooperation)- Table 4. Ecological or physical environment characteristics (diagram, photos

[optional], and description of use)- Table 5. Design characteristics (hardware, software, network, other equipment,

location in use setting and access)



Learning Outcomes (2)

• Minimum- Describe key features of work- Describe the basics of doing a design ethnography

• Maximum- Describe what kind of method ethnography is- Describe the purpose of ethnography- Describe the role of ethnography in design- Describe key features of work- Describe the basics of doing a design ethnography



Supporting Documentation

• Slides available @www.mrl.nott.ac.uk/~axc/G64UID/Work_Analysis.pdf• Work analysis tables @www.mrl.nott.ac.uk/~axc/G64UID/Work_Analysis_Tables.doc• Referenced texts:

- Anderson, R. (1997) “Work, ethnography and system design”, The Encyclopedia of Microcomputers (eds. Kent, A. and Williams, J.G.), vol. 20, pp. 159-183.

- Hughes, J., Randall, D. and Shapiro, D. (1992) “Faltering from ethnography to design”, Proceedings of the 1992 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 115-122, Toronto: ACM Press.

- Hughes, J., King, V., Rodden, T. and Andersen, H. (1994) “Moving out of the control room: ethnography in systems design”, Proceedings of the 1994 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 429-438, Chapel Hill, North Carolina: ACM Press.

- Malinowski, B. (1922) Argonauts of the Western Pacific, Routledge & Kegan Paul.- Prus, R. (1996) “The ethnographic research tradition”, Symbolic Interaction and Ethnographic

Research, pp. 103-140, New York: State University of New York Press.

Documents

User Interface Design G64UID Andy Crabtree [email protected] Slides available @ axc/G64UID/Work_Analysis.pdf ‘Work’ Analysis … or doing