In this paper, Pirolli and Card present a model of the “sensemaking loop”, the process by which analysts gather, filter, understand, and hypothesize about information. To build this model, they used cognitive task analysis and think aloud protocol analysis to identify the techniques and processes the analysts were using. However, the authors provide no further … Continue reading »
It’s been a little quiet on the blog lately, as you may have noticed. I have been hard at work, trying to finish my master’s thesis. I would love to tell you all about the work that I have been doing, but I have been banned from talking about it in detail on the internet … Continue reading »
This semester I was tasked with creating a new recruitment video for the Computer Science department. I decided to do something a little offbeat, that might attract a different variety of folk. Here is the result! Seven Reasons OU Computer Science is Better Than Hogwarts from Rachel Shadoan on Vimeo.
The internet is a many-splendored thing, and its advent and success has vastly expanded the reach of your average ethnographer. Information that we could once only access in face-to-face interactions can now be collected remotely, from across an ocean, across continents, across time and space. This is a great opportunity to learn more about people, … Continue reading »
I want you to take a look at these visualizations. These are all charts depicting what skill a Plant Wars player is training, as well as how many stat points they receive as a result of their fertilizing of their plant. (There is a direct correlation between the amount of fertilizer used and the stat … Continue reading »
And now, for more data visualizations than you can comfortably shake a stick at. Here I have charted all of the fertilizes for January-March 2009. These are a little hard to read, because there’s so much information here, but take note of the sort of density spike in the middle of the chart. Basically it … Continue reading »
We have some new visualizations for your viewing pleasure, this time of individual Plant Wars players! In Plant Wars, players can increase their plant’s abilities by fertilizing, or “training”. Players can choose what ability they want to increase when they fertilize. Fertilizing Attack (referred to as Potency in the game) makes their plant’s attack stronger. … Continue reading »
Part of the documentation we assemble before every project is an interview and observation guide. It’s supposed to serve as a checklist for supplies, as well as a guideline for how to conduct the interview. It includes the information we are trying to get at, as well as the questions we’re using to do so. … Continue reading »
One of the greatest challenges for ethnographers is what to do with all of the data we collect. In addition to the physical notebooks full of scratch notes, we also have lots of digital data–from audio recordings of interviews to photographs taken during observations to the field notes we write up after an interaction with … Continue reading »
Field notes, for the ethnographically uninitiated, are detailed descriptions of field work (interviews with and observations of people). Contrary to what the name suggests, field notes are not actually taken in the field while we are interviewing and observing people. Rather, while we are in the field we take scratch notes. In our scratch notes … Continue reading »
