the guidance I needed in the field in
Tanzania. They did not give specific
enough information about the wider
context of use and could not predict
which user-research techniques
would be most useful. Being very
generalized descriptions, they did
not pinpoint what mattered most
to Tanzanian students as users of
mobile phones, and enforced rather
than guarded against overgeneralizations. For these reasons, I turned
to ethnographic fieldwork.
An Ethnographic,
Value-centered Approach
The approach I used for doing user
research in Tanzania was based
on a long-term, flexible research
process, in which several user-research techniques were combined and the early design efforts
were focused on understanding
the general patterns of technology use and ownership, the user
values and the context behind
them, and the design context.
Long-term, flexible fieldwork. I
developed the required understanding about local context and values
through a relatively long period (six
months) of fieldwork. The fieldwork
gave me more accurate and useful
information for planning the design
activities and made it possible to
pay attention to both cultural patterns and differences across contexts and user groups.
I found long-term fieldwork
effective for many reasons. To
begin with, it was my first time
in Tanzania, and there was not
much information available about
conducting user research in the
particular design setting. In such
situations, learning about the wider
context of use and finding the best
techniques for user research takes
time. In addition, lengthier time in
the field provides a chance to get
better data and deeper understand-
ing, because early interactions with
informants in the field are often
characterized by misunderstand-
ings and uncertainty [ 4].
March + April 2012