Rapid ethnography

Field research methods are useful in the many aspects of Human-Computer Interaction research, including gathering user requirements, understanding and developing user models, and new product evaluation and iterative design. Due to increasingly short product realization cycles, there has been growing interestth in more time efficient methods, including rapid prototyping methods and various usability inspection techniques. This paper will introduce "rapid ethnography," which is a collection of field methods intended to provide a reasonable understanding of users and their activities given significant time pressures and limited time in the field.. The core elements include limiting or constraining the research focus and scope, using key informants, capturing rich field data by using multiple observers and interactive observation techniques, and collaborative qualitative data analysis. A short case study illustrating the important characteristics of rapid ethnography will also be presented.