Ethnography

From GSLISWiki

You just had to be there...

A tool derived from anthropology that involves going to where people do what they do, watching them doing it, trying to understand what they do and coming back and telling the rest of us.

Ethnomethodologically informed ethnography is a special kind of ethnography. Refined by researchers at Lancaster University for use in studying workplace practice as a way of informing systems design it claims to be atheoretical and to focus on understanding how the people involved see what they do, rather than imposing an external abstract model onto their activities.

It can infuriate computer scientists with its very alien use of language.