Mark Rouncefield

Doing design ethnography

Precis.- Ethnography and Systems Design.- Our Kind of Sociology.- Finding the Animal in the Foliage.- Dispensing with Method.- Doing Fieldwork.- Analysing the Ethnographic Record.- Informing Design.- Some Common Misunderstandings, Objections and Complaints.- Design Ethnography in a Nutshell.

“They’re Supposed to Be Fixing it”: Requirements and System Redesign

Much of the literature on the requirements process focuses on the initial stages of system design, when it is essential for designers to obtain as clear a statement as possible of the intended purpose and function of a system. The process of requirements capture and presentation is highlighted by the software engineering community as error-prone, and one where even the simplest error can have significant and costly implications. Numerous methods have been proposed to facilitate this process (see, for example, McDermid 1994, Sommerville 1992). These methods focus on both the development of techniques to elicit requirements from users and notational approaches to allow these requirements to be presented to systems developers.