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Learning from Commonsense:
Ethnomethodology and Systems Design
Ethnomethodological studies of work have become an
increasingly used resource in the design of computer systems
for well over a decade. The analysis of the constitutive
practices of work by ethnomethodologists has had both a
general methodological influence on design, and a practical
consequence for the design of particular systems. On the one
hand the idea that human action and interaction is situated
has led to a methodological argument that in order to better
design systems for the work place it is necessary to analyse
the work a system will support from within the context of
its production and within the swarm of contingencies it will
encounter. On the other hand, actual studies of work have
provided requirements for actual systems that have reduced
the gap between the technology and the work of those who use
it.
However,
with the emphasis upon work practice, and within the
inevitable turbulences of communicating across disciplines,
many of the underpinnings of ethnomethodological
investigation have been glossed in the dialogue between
ethnomethodologists and computer system designers. One of
those underpinnings is the interest that ethnomethodologists
have in practical reasoning and understanding, that is, with
the way in which people use their stock of commonsense
knowledge to reason about and understand social action and
interaction. Yet, the ways in which people make sense of the
things they see and hear, employing their socially organised
commonsense ways of reasoning in their interactions with one
another, may be a valuable resource for the design of
systems to support learning situations.
In the
manner of ethnomethodology, this is not an abstract
argument, it is one that can be articulated in study and
design practice. To make it I will take a case study which
was done by the Work Practice Technology group at Xerox
Research Centre Europe (XRCE) consisting of Stefania
Castellani, Antonietta Grasso, Peter Tolmie, Jacki O’Neill
and myself. We have been interested in the way in which
designers of on-line systems to support users of technology
in solving problems they are having can learn from the ways
in which troubleshooters at call centres, dealing with the
same sorts of problems, make sense of the problem
descriptions provided by customers in order to work out a
solution.
Users of
on-line systems often find it difficult to use the system to
resolve their problem. This is because the design of the
system makes it difficult for them to reason through from
their problem to the solution due to the fact that the
system embodies a technical world view. The studies done by
the Work Practice Technology group at XRCE of
troubleshooters on help desks made it clear that there are
commonsense practices employed by both troubleshooters and
customers in their interaction in order to arrive at
descriptions of problems and ways to go about solving them
that are coherent to both parties. That is, troubleshooters
work on the telephone as a bridge between commonsense
reasoning about problems and more technical modes of
reasoning about the same things.
The need
for a bridge here is informative for a range of more
directly pedagogic interests. Many products are provided
with a range of resources through which it is intended that
users should acquire an understanding of how best to use
those products and handle difficulties when they arise.
There is also increasing diversity in these resources. No
longer is it just a matter of working with the product
manual. Instead users are often now bombarded with learning
materials from CD-ROMs to product websites. However, it is
still the case that these resources are most often scripted
and designed from the perspective of a technical
understanding of the products. Our studies indicate that to
rely on just technical instruction with a glossary is very
wide of the mark with regard to its actual efficacy in use.
If a bridge is needed to allow for commonsense reasoning in
troubleshooting a similar adaptability to commonsense
reasoning is needed in these resources as well.
The
message here for designers of learning resources for
products is a clear one: there is a need to attend to how
people will reason about those products if one is going to
provide effective resources for learning about their
operation. When learning how to use a product the
acquisition of a technical vocabulary and perspective is an
overhead few users will sign up for. Instead there is a
need to provide product support resources that are
immediately accessible from a commonsense point of view. In
that there are already people whose job it is to make
technical information about products accessible to lay users
(for example, help desk trouble shooters) there already
exists for learning material designers a ready resource to
be tapped for understanding just how one might construct
bridges from the technical to commonsense points of view.
Ethnomethodology’s interest in how people reason through and
make sense of their world can be used to tap that resource.
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