- Let's discuss another research tool
called photo ethnography.
With photo ethnography, the researcher
asks the research participant to document
an aspect of their life with photography.
Including the research participant into the process
offers a couple of really interesting distinctions.
The first is that photo ethnography is a great way
to gain more empathy for your user.
When the participant records information for you,
you're able to experience the scenario
from their perspective.
In other words, if I ask you to record
how you eat, you might show me something
that I could have missed if I interviewed you
or even if I observed you myself.
Second, it gets researcher into places
that are hard to access.
Say you wanna record someone's morning routine,
how they wake up, get dressed and prepare for work.
You're gonna have a hard time observing
that routine for yourself.
But if you give a participant a camera
and have them document that routine for you,
you'll have a much better opportunity
to get what you're looking for.
Photo ethnography works great in the beginning stages
of a research problem.
It helps provide the researcher with more insight
into the context that they're studying.
Let's take a closer look at the scenario
from earlier in this course.
You're part of a team that's trying to understand
the eating habits of college students.
You believe that generally, they have
a pretty unhealthy diet and your goal
is to find a way that design can help
improve this and to promote a more healthy lifestyle.
Now, college students are all over the place
in how they eat, when they eat, what they eat
and how healthy they are, so this
is going to be a tough group to break into.
So you decide to conduct a photo ethnography study,
asking college students to record their eating behaviors.
First, you seek a group of participants
who agree to document their eating habits for you.
It's a good idea to start with a group
in this case that's maybe a little bit larger,
like 20 or so.
Photo ethnography is very subjective
and everyone will record data differently for you.
Some may leave things out, others may change
their behavior, and don't forget how diverse
this group already is.
Having more data will help you to find truth
in those reoccurring patterns.
On that note, it's important to provide clear instructions.
Take photos of all your meals and snacks,
where you shop for food, as well as who you eat with,
what you cook with and what you do while eating.
It's important that your participants
understand what you're looking for,
but you also wanna be fairly loose in your guidance
so that you don't limit anything they might document.
You could gain some extra insights
that you weren't necessarily planning on learning.
For example, while looking through some of the results,
we noticed that many students cook
with microwaves in their dorms and the food they cook
is usually pre-made meals that just need reheating.
We also noticed that students ate, on average,
one meal a day alone in their dorm room.
And we didn't notice any other kind of cooking equipment,
such as a stovetop or an oven.
So from this, we might assume that one of the problems
leading to unhealthy eating is a lack
of sufficient tools needed to prepare a healthy meal.
Photo ethnography requires some planning and setup.
You need to know your participant pool
well enough to make connections with willing participants.
This could be a difficult tool.
Photo ethnography takes time for someone to complete
and it's not always easy finding someone
to do any kind of substantial research work for you.
If you're less familiar with your audience,
you might seek the help of someone inside
of their group that help make you connections.
In the case of our scenario, you could reach out
to some teachers on campus who might be willing
to encourage their students to participate.
Remind your audience to be honest
in documenting aspects of their lives
that you're interested in.
It's also important to reassure them
about their safety as far as their identity is concerned.
Tell your participants how you will use
the information they give you and also how
you will protect their identity and privacy.
There is one element of photo ethnography
to be cautious about.
By giving the participant power over what to document,
there's a chance they might only document
certain things, and not everything, for you.
For example, your college students could decide
to only take photos of the major meals
they have during the day, say, breakfast,
lunch and dinner.
They might leave out any snacks they have in between meals.
Now, this could be because either they forgot
what you wanted or maybe they didn't wanna show you
how unhealthy they eat.
Therefore, it's important to use this tool
alongside other research methods,
like observational note taking or interviews,
to help validate the research that's being collected.