The notion of the real world....?

Again another great post from Pasta & Vinegar

The notion of “the real” as user research is meant to bring material concerning the real world, what users really do, what are their constraints and needs, and in fine why they do what they do. The literature in HCI, especially about the use of ethnography, has a wide take on this but I was more curious to see what designers have to say about it. Reading User research at IDII: Three case studies, 2002-2004 by Simona Maschi, Laura Polazzi and Jay Melican, I ran across this interesting quote:

“Everything we learn from user studies has the great advantage of being “true” (although not in an absolute way), because it comes from the real world and from real experiences. This makes it somehow believable and graspable for our audience, both within and outside of the design team. In other words user studies provide the design team with “live material” that can be used to share thoughts and ideas and to communicate the project effectively to the world.“

(The document is btw a relevant set of case study and quick description of research methods employed at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea).

This notion of the “real” as the cornerstone of the exchange between UX research and design was also interestingly tackled at the recent EPIC conference. See for example how this weblog highlight the “real issue” in the discussion about how ethnographers can build and exhibit the authority necessary to be able to sell and provide ethnographic insights:

“Simon Pulman-Jones argued, ethnographers in industry are seeking to establish themselves as an authority on The Real - what it is really like out there in order to commoditize our insights, our epiphanies to help the organisations that we work for and with.
(…)
Ethnographers are indeed ‘brokers of the real‘ - they have themselves attained a sort of gatekeeper role between the designers and the engineers and the real world where real people actually use the products. They help the engineers meet and understand the users, in order to change the way the engineers think and feel about them.

Why blog this?

The writing has particular relevance in the how to understand and bridge from the real world of the science lab to the development/system view.

Is a design ethnographer more of an important gate keeper? In the sense that they hold vital information for the design process.

And as the process of communication is key, what of the ways to clearly communicate the real, to allow the engineers to understand the users, in order to change the way the engineers think and feel about them?

I think this should and I can propose a two way process also, so the design ethnographer can have insight in the engineering process to see how the real world work is reflected technically in the engineers model.