IN-PERSON: Prague – Section B

Abstract

This paper will explore the connection between design ethnography and participatory research and design in the design, production, and dissemination of digital projects that preserve, present, and interpret real-world cultures. The case study offered, an interactive and immersive website produced in collaboration with a South American weaving non-profit, will provide readers with an insider’s view regarding how to design digital ethnography research methods in a way that considers particular media affordances and constraints—in other words, drawing on Donald Norman’s concept of design affordances, which considers the possible ways that something you are designing could potentially be used. Such work provides powerful opportunities for research participants, and the interdisciplinary team with whom they are working, to reflect and discuss, and this attention to process aids in the collaborative research endeavor, while producing valuable insights as participants articulate the thought process behind design decisions. In addition, the paper will explore how the digital platforms themselves enable new ways to tell stories about that research.