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are esthetically designed with a gender inclination to them (often, towards women)
and posed the question as to whether household technologies should be designed
with more of a male focus (Blythe and Monk, 2002).
In another ethnographic study of domestic (home) use of technology, a “felt
board” was used to help model daily home life (Rode et al., 2004). The board had dif-
ferent sections for different rooms in the house. Users were asked to place felt icons
representing appliances in appropriate rooms, and to identify if they programmed
these devices in advance (although the term programming wasn't used). The fuzzy
felt board was used to help understand patterns of usage, after participants provided
a tour of where the devices were in the home (Rode et al., 2004).
Another ethnographic study examined the use of cleaning products by older in-
dividuals (Wyche, 2005). The goal was to better understand the challenges that older
individuals face in trying to use cleaning products in their homes, to inspire some
potentially useful designs for new cleaning technologies. The researcher observed
20 individuals, between the ages of 69 and 91, in their homes to learn what types of
cleaning product and technology they use, where they store them, and which ones are
very hard to use. The researcher then presented ideas for some potential technology
solutions to these challenges (Wyche, 2005).

9.5.2 WORK SETTINGS
Ethnographic methods are often used to examine the context of technology usage in
the workplace. For instance, ethnographic methods were used to understand how in-
surance claims adjusters do their job in the workplace. Researchers observed the en-
tire process of claims handling, with a special focus on fraudulent claims (Ormerod
et al., 2003). A number of process barriers were discovered, such as poor documen-
tation and communication, and claims adjusters were discovered to use a number of
heuristics and alternative explanations to discover fraud. This ethnographic research
of how claims adjusters work was then used to help develop a new software tool for
detecting insurance fraud.
Ethnographic methods were also used in studying a highways department from a
state government. The goal was to understand the process of designing and building a
bridge, so that an electronic-document management system could be built (Suchman,
2000a,b). One of the challenges was in understanding how electronic documents
and paper documents were used. It was discovered that it was important to design
connections between the electronic and paper documents, and then determine who
needed access to the electronic documents, since paper documents have limited ac-
cess based on physical location but electronic documents don't have that limitation.
Health-care settings are also of interest to ethnographers. Pedersen and Wolff
(2008) documented ethnographic research in two physical therapy clinics in the
USA, to understand how small health operations work. They had originally wanted
to observe at general health-care clinics (and they had done previous interviews with
10 small health-care clinics), but had problems getting access to observe at these
sites. Therefore, physical therapy, in which a lot of patient treatment occurs in a