Page 268 -

256 CHAPTER 9 Ethnography

RESEARCHING ONLINE DATING—CONT’D
How would that work? Note that in two of the research studies above,
profiles or data were taken from online dating sites and used in research
studies, without the express permission of the owners (although the terms
and conditions of site usage would allow it). Although these people were not
research subjects, their online profiles were involved. Clearly, if ethnographic
methods were used and researchers went out on dates with unsuspecting
research participants, this would be a far more serious ethical concern. This
leads to an important question: how can you do ethnographic research and
collect accurate data, while participants are aware of your research? For
further discussion of the ethical issues associated with online dating research
projects, see Section 1.5.2.4.1.

If a community has both a physical and a virtual component, both might be good
candidates for ethnographic research. For instance, Ploderer, Howard, and Thomas
(Ploderer et al., 2008) were interested in researching the community of bodybuild-
ers, people who are passionate about staying fit, building muscle, and taking part in
bodybuilding competitions. The researchers used ethnographic methods in both the
physical community and the online community. They went to seven bodybuilding
gyms to observe and also attended two bodybuilding competitions. In addition, the
BodySpace social networking website has over 160,000 people interested in body-
building. The researchers created a profile and for 4 months, participated with and
observed the members of the community and communicated with various commu-
nity members (Ploderer et al., 2008).

9.6 SUMMARY
Ethnographic methods are very useful in understanding the context of technology
usage. By examining the human, social, and organizational contexts of technology, a
deeper understanding of who these users are can be developed. In ethnographic tradi-
tions, a better understanding of a group of people and their traditions and processes is
itself a noble and worthwhile goal. However, in the HCI community, ethnography is
often used as a first step, to understand a group of users, their problems, challenges,
norms, and processes, with the eventual goal of building some type of technology for
them or with them. Currently, ethnographic research methods are used most often
in home settings, work settings, educational settings, and online. However, new ap-
proaches to ethnographic research are being developed to study, for example, how
people use ubiquitous computing in real-world settings anywhere, such as the street,
the subway, or a park, for activities including role-playing games, geocaching, and
education (Crabtree et al., 2006).