1.This example is from professor Scott Klemmer

Mike Kuniavsky is a colleague of mine and a design consultant and author. When we were talking about the role of fieldwork and design, he gave me the example of an electronics firm that makes devices for truckers. Apparently, the systems were underused and sometimes, when responses were provided, they were pretty minimal. These mobile devices had small physical keyboards. When the designers went into the field and spent time with the truckers that used them, they found that many truckers had big hands and wore bulky gloves, making it near impossible to use the tiny keys. The resulting redesign featured a large touch screen. This interface provided common responses with one click, as opposed to lots of typing. And the dynamic display made it possible to have big buttons and a stylus was introduced for precision input when that was necessary.

2.The video is mainly about

What we’re going to talk about in this lecture is observing people to discover their needs, goals, and values.“you can observe a lot just by watching.” What we’re going to talk about today is participant observationtechniques, for standing in someone else’s shoes. 

3.The background of participant observation techniques

The techniques in this lecture are inspired by the fieldwork strategies that anthropologists use to learn about and document culture. In 1914, Bronisław Malinowski travelled to Papua New Guinea, where he conducted fieldwork at Mailu in the Trobriand Islands. While he is there, World War I breaks out. He has two options: either hang out in the Trobriand Islands, or face internment. I think you can guess which option he picked. During this period, he developed the practices of participant observation which remain a hallmark of ethnographic research to this day. In this photograph, Malinowski is being taught to play a stringed instrument. The picture of Malinowski is a wonderful illustration of what Genevieve Bell calls “Deep Hanging Out”: By spending time with people doing their work and living their lives, you can get beyond the surface things that people say, to learn about what they actually do.

4. what we’re going to hopefully learn by participant observation in this class is five key things

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5.a  effective strategy

One effective strategy for learning about the work practices of your users is to apprentice yourself.

examples：复印机修理呼叫中心/PhD student Ron Yeh/超市结账系统

6.Pay attention

Pay attention to all of the artefacts that compose part of people’s work

7.thinking

I’d like to close by giving you an example from Walmart. A couple of years ago, in a survey, Walmart asked its customers whether they would like the aisles to be less cluttered. I bet you can guess what the response is:“Yes!” I think anybody, if asked that way, would say “I’d love the aisles to be less cluttered!” So, very diligently, in response to these survey results that Walmart got, they decluttered their aisles. As this news article reports, Walmart spent hundreds of dollars decluttering its aisles, removing inventory, cleaning things up. And what happened is that they lost a billion dollars in sales. This seems surprising — they did exactly what people asked. Right?

8.Telling some reasons

Walmart made two mistakes that, after taking this class you’ll be able to avoid.

The first is that they paid attention to what people said, rather than what they did. 

The second is that their survey asked a leading question,“Would you like the aisles less cluttered?” Put together, this gave them a direction that was exactly the opposite of what turned out to be the most effective.