Ethicography

Published by Thomas Carlock on

Ethicography

Method Overview

A research method for value discovery, identifying how values were first identified and how these values impacted later design decisions by visualizing the interplay of identified values.

Example of a an Ethicography from a publicly available academic paper.

Getting Started

Materials: Research material (Design activity, Conversation among designers)

Participants: Individual/Team

Steps:

  1. Unitize the speech acts and analyzed the communication structure of the dialogues of the participants.
  2. Inductively identify and apply a “value code” to each speech act in the transcript.
    * a value code is defined as an intent of the speech act that would represent the participant’s attitude towards one or more values. The values were adapted a prior from Friedman 2003, including types such as: ownership, privacy, accountability, freedom from bias, trust, autonomy, usability, informed consent, and human welfare.
  3. Attribute an idea code to the speech act. These codes are marked as the layers over the links created among the speech acts of the participants
  4. Form the link.

 

This methods microsite is based off of analysis which is available in a preprint manuscript. Feel free to review our methodology and other details! We welcome your comments and feedback ! Please also use this form if you would like to suggest a method as an addition to the collection!