MSCS3207: Ethnographic Research

This course covers the foundations of ethnography and its application to the presentation of computer interfaces. Ethnography is a research method central to knowing the world from the standpoint of its social relations. It is a qualitative research method predicated on the diversity of culture. With ethnographic research, a strong emphasis is on exploring the nature of a particular phenomenon, particularly social based, rather than setting out to test hypotheses about it. With ethnography there is a tendency to work primarily with unstructured data, which are data that have not been coded at the point of data collection as a closed set of specific categories. This course uses ethnography as a foundation to develop socially and culturally acceptable and appropriate user interfaces. (Prerequisites: None)