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