Katja Thoring

Ethnographic Design Research With Wearable Cameras

This paper presents a novel ethnographic research approach based on a wearable camera that automatically takes pictures according to sensor changes within the wearers environment. The opportunities and challenges that are raised by such technologies are investigated and discussed. We describe an exemplary application of the approach and point out the arising possibilities and limitations. As the main contribution we present a method for evaluating the ethnographic research data that is being produced through this kind of research approach. Furthermore, we propose a set of frameworks for analyzing the resulting images and related metadata. This method is considered a first attempt to facilitate the analysis process of the produced qualitative and quantitative data and is subject to further investigation and development.