Annotated Pictures form an integral part of any ethnographic study.  And i see huge potential for Moblogging or Photoblogs as a form of sharing, exchanging ideas and reporting - especially when you have a large team like we do on this study.   

Stuart and i are experimenting with a prototype for a Project Blog on Movable Type.  Remotely, as we are worlds apart - he set up the templates for me and gave me instructions via Skype.  

Here's a screen shot - this is a dummy really to protect Client confidentiality :

On the left panel we have navigator links -

* project stages - initial site visit, detailed ethnographies, prototyping, follow-up interviews etc

* site names - a list of all sites for the study with site names

* other links - conference call scheduling, formal client feedback, correspondence, project specifications (templates for observations, reporting, interview guides, project objectives etc), cribs and reading notes and links

* researcher names with links to each

* archiving by day and month

On the right side - the calender recent posts and recent comments highlights.

With project stage for each site by researcher as navigational categories, we built the ability to have all of this in one space (as opposed to sending individual reports weekly over 5 months asynchronously), and to sort by several layers - eg. if you want to read all work done by one of the researchers just clink on the link with the researcher's name.  Likewise, you can view all activities around Site A for the research. And with comments enabled you could get feedback that is synchronous.  And set up announcements and schedules too. And expand our shared learning through reading notes and links. 

This screen shot shows how each post would appear - each post would have author, date, and links to the categories it fit into.  Eg. title of post - Interview with Admin head, author - dina mehta, categories - Site A; Conceptual Prototypes Visit.  And comments enabled to encourage feedback that is synchronous, in real-time and shared by all so learning takes place in this collaborative framework.

Now compare this with more traditional ways of reporting in such studies.  Weekly reports from each of the ethnographer teams, downloading pictures onto our machines, encrypting all of this and either sending each by email or uploading onto an ftp server.  And each report and picture gets slotted in different folders.  As also all our correspondence.  Which takes up huge amounts of time.  Is asynchronous and not in real time. And doesn't give us the 'gestalt' of learnings on the study in one space.  Just not efficient. 

Add to this, Musiclogging (thanks Seb, Marc for bringing this to my notice) and Audioblogging.  And then, combined with the Online Presence Spiral,  it could be something really special.

I think it would be pretty awesome if we could develop this type of approach for using with clients - it has emerged as a result of the recent study i am conducting - and i thought i'd share it here so we can improve upon it.  I'm fairly convinced that the benefits can be huge - especially when you think of multi-client projects or studies spread across several locations. 

What do you feel ?

11:59:13 PM    comment []  trackback []

Some pictures 'from the trenches' : i've been working on an ethnographic study.  I have to maintain confidentiality so no explanations and only a few images here !

Spent 10 days here :

and here :

and some entertainment for my Clients  - in and about the city of Delhi :

Cows and modernity

We found this snake charmer outside a restaurant.  He wanted my Client to wrap the snake around his neck - and he was planning to make it dance with his flute !

Buying Indian Jewelry

8:44:32 PM    comment []  trackback []