Digital Ethnography For Social Interaction Design

Digital Ethnography for
Social Interaction Design

Brynn M. Evans
brynnevans.com

Who am I?

2
Who am I? My training is in Science and Technology in Society (STS). What this means is the
the perspective I bring to research and design span psychology, anthropology, and sociology.

Who am I? Science & Technology in Society

2


I think,
therefore I am.

psychology
2


Don’t forget
your chores,
son!
I think,
therefore I am.

psychology anthropology
2


Don’t forget
your chores,
son!
I think, Come help me
therefore I am. figure out this
puzzle!

You owe me
one, brother!

psychology anthropology sociology
2

Social Interaction Design (SxD)
SXDSALON.ORG

3
My application of this philosophy happens to be in an area called Social Interaction Design
(SxD). Sxd is all about psychology, anthropology, and sociology. It’s about design for person-
person communication in online mediates spaces. It goes beyond single-user design (a
typical HCI approach), and tries to address teh design of communities which must consider
unseen elements of the system such as social relationships, power dynamics, and cultural
rules.

Should we support OpenID or
Facebook Connect, or require
new users to create an account?

Ask: What are you users’ goals?
4
For example, whether you choose to support OpenID, FB Connect, or have users create a new
account on your web service will depend on your users goals. Do mint.com customers want
to be sharing private, ﬁnancial information with their FB contacts? But Urban Outﬁtters
customers just might...

Should we support OpenID or
Facebook Connect, or require
new users to create an account?

vs.

Ask: What are you users’ goals?
4
For example, whether you choose to support OpenID, FB Connect, or have users create a new
account on your web service will depend on your users goals. Do mint.com customers want
to be sharing private, ﬁnancial information with their FB contacts? But Urban Outﬁtters
customers just might...

Social search is an SxD problem
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/
3_flavors_of_social_search_what_to_expect.php PHOTOS BY BREWBROOKS, CLAUDIA LIM, http://whowantstobe.co.uk/bench/faq-en.php
5
On the surface, social search is something about “involving other people in a search task”.
But there are at least three distinct “ﬂavors” of social search which meaningfully distinguish
between different types of social involvement in search tasks.

(See RWW article for more details: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/
3_ﬂavors_of_social_search_what_to_expect.php).

Question-
Collective Friend-filtered
Answering

Social search is of social search
Three “flavors” an SxD problem
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/
3_flavors_of_social_search_what_to_expect.php PHOTOS BY BREWBROOKS, CLAUDIA LIM, http://whowantstobe.co.uk/bench/faq-en.php
5
On the surface, social search is something about “involving other people in a search task”.
But there are at least three distinct “ﬂavors” of social search which meaningfully distinguish
between different types of social involvement in search tasks.

(See RWW article for more details: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/
3_ﬂavors_of_social_search_what_to_expect.php).

Q Q Q

A A A

Question-
Answering

A multi-user problem
http://www.slideshare.net/bmevans/designing-for-sociality-in-enterprise-search 6
Social search is a multi-user problem: you’re either designing for implicit interactions with
many users or explicit interactions with a direct partner. We have to consider issues of
relevance, privacy, expectations, obligations, social capital, etc.

Q Q Q
•relevance
•privacy
A A A
• expectations of
how archived
material will be
used
Question-
Answering


Q Q Q

•relevance, privacy
•burdening experts
A A A
•obligation/debt
•social capital
•interruption cost
Question-
Answering


Research Methods for SxD

experience critical task
sampling incident Q. analysis

7
On my path to understanding social search, I’ve taken several different methodological
approach, which were appropriate for different research goals. Since there are a lot of
challenges with studying online communities (they’re distributed, people multitask,
researchers cannot easily “shadow” a participant...), these are some methods I’ve worked
with.

experience
Research Methods sampling

play
play

play
play

play

play

play

time (one week) 8

Experience sampling is the online equivalent of observation/ethnography. It’s best illustrated
by Bolt|Peter’s project working with FarmVille. They wanted to improve the game playing
experience, so wrote a Facebook script that would alert them whenever users logged into the
game. Users would then see a prompt to participate in a survey or record a screencast (to be
shared back with the researchers), and would capture users in their natural interaction with
the game.

experience
Research Methods sampling
Social Informavores:
Information Discovery on the Social Web

TIM, 27 yr

LESLIE, 37 yr

CHAD, 38 yr
9

My use of experience sampling came with one of my earlier projects that had the very general
goal of understanding: what role do social networks play in sharing and disseminating
information?

I recruited 3 participants who were friends with each other and interacted on a regular basis.
They each recorded 30-60 minute screencasts of activities online, while they were reading,
socializing, sharing information, etc. And then I manually reviewed the videos and interviewed
the participants.

Experience sampling was a useful methodology here since I was looking broadly at what was
going on in the universe of social information sharing.


sampling incident Q. analysis .

10

Next, I was able to pinpoint an interesting use of social information: to help people during
search tasks. But now I had to learn a whole lot more about HOW PEOPLE SEARCH.

critical
Research Methods incident Q.

Study 1: Study 2:
everyday searches difficult or failed searches

1. When was the last time you searched for information?
2. What were you looking for?
3. What were you doing just before you searched?
4. Did you talk with anyone before you searched?
5. What prompted you to perform the search?
6. What steps did you take to ﬁnd the information?
7. What did you do just after you searched?
8. If other people were nearby, were you interacting with
them or were they inﬂuencing your search process?

Modification:
• write survey for different users
• give survey continuously thru development/deployment 11

To do this I ran two detailed, critical incident questionnaires. One was focused around
successful searches; the other around difficult or failed searches. Both asked questions about
just one episode from the recent past — and explored a lot of issues before, during, and after
the search that highlighted critical moments.

Critical incident questioning was the right method here because I was trying to understand a
particular problem space in more detail and I wanted lots of (qualitative) usage data. (I got
150 replies to both surveys.)


sampling incident Q. analysis

12

Finally, tasks analysis has been useful to understand the speciﬁc role that friends and
colleagues will play in augmenting search.

task
Research Methods analysis
Do your friends make you smarter?
Exploring social interactions in search

Setup:
• 8 users given 2 “Google-hard” search tasks
• Asked to only use friends and social networks to find answers
• talk-aloud protocol, paired with video screencasts

SS03
!,!!,!!" !,!),#$" !,#&,$&" !,$#,%(" !,$*,&*" !,%(,!!"
!"
!,!!,!!" !,!),#$" !,#&,$&" !,$#,%(" !,$*,&*" !,%(,!!"

#"
TIME
$"

%"
http://www.slideshare.net/bmevans/do-your-friends-make-you-smarter-exploring-social-interactions-in-search 13
&"
This method is obviously used in other domains as well. The particular value for me in this
stage of'" my research was to learn about the beneﬁts of interacting with just one partner
direction (question-answering) compared to engaging with a large network like Facebook or
("
Twitter to come about an answer to a problem. I was able to follow up with 15-20 of the
)"
answerers who helped out my 8 primary participants to learn more about what their
perspective of the questioning episode was and why they provided a reply.
*"

+"

#!"

##"

#$"

Beyond Data Collection

Of course, understanding the interactions in a community goes beyond just data collection.

Personas
Conferring Carl Resourceful Richard
Always confers with partners first; then continues the Makes use of social aids multiple times during a search task
search alone (e.g., confers with friends, then searches alone, then asks
friends again)
“I was looking for a real estate lease that I “First I called our corporate office to find
needed to review. [I first] talked to [my out what [workman’s comp]
coworker] to see where he thought he had documentation needed to be filled out
put it and where he had already looked. and when it was last updated. Then I
[Then I] looked for PDFs in My Documents, searched on our corporate website but
and in the C: drive of the computer used by could not find a working link to the
the person who scanned it. [Finally I] documents. After this I called corporate
checked PDFs with unrevealing filenames back and asked them to fax me the
and found it!” documents.”

Persistent Pria Troupe Together
Prefers to go-it-alone until he gets stuck; only seeks help Actively collaborates with a partner throughout the search
from others after exhausting other options
“I was looking for information about
“I was looking for a particular type of plug- horse trekking holidays in France as
in for use with Movable Type software. part of a conversation I was having
First, I tried a number of different search with my wife. We searched on
strings with Google. Then I searched the google.co.uk and google.fr with a
Six Apart / Movable Type website. Then I range of criteria related to horses,
tried perusing and searching several equine holidays, horse trekking,
Movable Type hacks/ tips/tutorials france, horse tours, etc. My wife
websites. Finally I contacted the author of was prompting me with thoughts for
the WordPress plug-in and asked him if he search terms I should use
might be able to port it into Movable Type.” throughout.”

PHOTOS BY FORACHANCE.WORDPRESS.COM, COOLEY.DEVIANTART.COM, POSIXELENI, R. STEPHEN RAINWATER
14

I’ve created behavioral personas that highlight user strategies and expected social
interactions with others. These are, therefore, somewhat more contextualized of personas
than merely personas based on demographics.

Personas: Conference Carla
Conferring Carla Resourceful Richard
Conferring Carl
Always confers with partners first; then continues the
search alone
Makes use of social aids multiple times during a search task
(e.g., confers with friends, then searches alone, then asks
Always confers with partners first; then continues
friends again)
“I was looking for a real estate lease that I
the search alone
needed to review. [I first] talked to [my
“First I called our corporate office to find
out what [workman’s comp]
coworker] to see where he thought he had documentation needed to be filled out
put it and where he had already looked. and when it was last updated. Then I
[Then I] looked for PDFs in My Documents,
and in the C: drive of the computer used by “I was looking for a real estate on our corporate website but
searched
could not find a working link to the
the person who scanned it. [Finally I] lease that I needed to review. [I
documents. After this I called corporate
checked PDFs with unrevealing filenames
and found it!” first] talked to [my coworker] toand asked them to fax me the
back
documents.”
see where he thought he had
put it and where he had
already looked. [Then I] looked
for PDFs in My Documents,
Prefers to go-it-alone until he gets stuck; only seeks help Actively collaborates with a partner throughout the search
and in the C: drive of the
from others after exhausting other options
computer used by the person“I was looking for information about
“I was looking for a particular type of plug- horse trekking holidays in France as
in for use with Movable Type software. who scanned it. [Finally I] part of a conversation I was having
First, I tried a number of different search checked PDFs with unrevealing my wife. We searched on
with
strings with Google. Then I searched the google.co.uk and google.fr with a
Six Apart / Movable Type website. Then I filenames and found it!” range of criteria related to horses,
tried perusing and searching several equine holidays, horse trekking,


The “Conferring Carl” profile, for example, likes getting feedback from friends and colleagues
before embarking on a search alone.

Personas: Persistent Pria
Conferring Carla Resourceful Richard
Persistent Pria
Always confers with partners first; then continues the
search alone
Makes use of social aids multiple times during a search task
(e.g., confers with friends, then searches alone, then asks
Prefers to go-it-alone until he gets stuck; only
friends again)
“I was looking for a real estate lease that I
needed to review.helptalked to [my
seeks [I first] from others after exhausting other “First I called our corporate office to find
out what [workman’s comp]
coworker] to see where he thought he had
options
put it and where he had already looked.
documentation needed to be filled out
and when it was last updated. Then I
[Then I] looked for PDFs in My Documents, “I was looking for a particularsearched on our corporate website but
type
and in the C: drive of the computer used by
the person who scanned it. [Finally I] of plug-in for use with Movable not find a working link to the
could
documents. After this I called corporate
checked PDFs with unrevealing filenames Type software. First, I tried a back and asked them to fax me the
and found it!”
number of different search strings
documents.”
with Google. Then I searched the
Six Apart / Movable Type website.
Then I tried perusing and
Prefers to go-it-alone until he gets stuck; only seeks help searchingcollaborates with a partner throughout the search
Actively several Movable Type
from others after exhausting other options hacks/ tips/tutorials websites. “I was looking for information about
“I was looking for a particular type of plug- Finally I contacted the author of horse trekking holidays in France as
in for use with Movable Type software.
First, I tried a number of different search the WordPress plug-in and asked of awife. We searched on
part
with my
conversation I was having

strings with Google. Then I searched the him if he might be able to port it google.co.uk and google.fr with a
Six Apart / Movable Type website. Then I range of criteria related to horses,
tried perusing and searching several into Movable Type.” equine holidays, horse trekking,


The “Persistent Pria”, however, strongly prefers to search alone before turning to others for
help.

These social strategies inform us of what users want and expect for social support in a search
system.

Tell a story

15
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22133391/Papel-the-Paper-Cup
It’s also important to frame your use cases/personas in realistic scenarios. Tell a story that
addresses some of the contextual & sociological issues that affect behavior in the social
ecosystem you’re designing for.

I did this for thebetacup.com, by recounting the life and times of a paper cup named “Papel.”

Bodystorming

Background: This is a play-acting or bodystorming exercise,goal was to2009, to illustrate thethe
problems in the Starbucks coffee culture. The
from July
bring awareness to
need for moving away from non-recyclable paper cups and towards more system-
wide, renewable options.

http://www.vimeo.com/5968946 16

Bodystorming (like play-acting) is another way to illustrate the many moving parts and
inﬂuential factors of a social system. I did this at the Overlap Conference in July 2009 with
thebetacup.com team to model what a coffee goer’s experience was like, with the goal of
understanding what consumers would want in a reusable travel mug.

Digital Ethnography For Social Interaction Design

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