Online papers on the use of ethnography 3.

In this section the online papers/reports are organised by research project  - covering a number of Research Projects that use/have used ethnographic approaches…. In no particular order..

The CASIDE Project: Investigating Investigating Cooperative Applications in Situated Display Environments – The central aim of the CASIDE project is to understand the way in which the physical placement and design of networked displays in semi-wild settings influences and facilitates coordination and community. This fundamental understanding will inform the development of suitable guidelines and methods for the design of situated displays both within and beyond the lifetime of the project.. We intend to use ethnographic and related studies in order to understand the social nature of public and semi-public spaces both before and after the introduction of situated display technology. This work will involve developing an understanding of the affordances of a given place, e.g. outside an office door, inside a communal living area etc. to help determine appropriate placement strategies for situated displays and an appreciation of what content may be relevant for display at a given place to facilitate cooperation (and sense of community) within a certain user group.”.

The POInter Project Patterns of Interaction: a Pattern Language for CSCW – “investigating the appropriateness of patterns as a means of communicating information about how people interact with each other through and around technology. Ultimately, this is with a view to informing the design process for computer systems to support the work and activities that the people are engaged in..”

DIRC The Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration in Dependability - “aims to address the dependability of computer-based systems. Dependability is a deliberately broad term to encompass many facets including reliability, security and availability”. A large number of publications – as abstracts and/or full text pdfs – are available online.

EQUATOR - The IRC brings together researchers from eight different institutions and a variety of disciplines that address the technical, social and design issues in the development of new inter-relationships between the physical and digital.

A series of experience projects engage with different user communities to develop new combinations of physical and digital worlds and how explore these may be exploited and how these may enhance the quality of everyday life.

A series of research challenges explore new classes of device that link the physical and the digital, research into adaptive software architectures and new design and evaluation methods that draw together approaches from social science, cognitive science and art and design. Now in its third year, it involves over 60 researchers, with a range of expertise that encompasses computer science, psychology, sociology, design and the arts.

There is a large database of publications available from this project..