Create More Than One Design: A Case Study of Applying Ethnographic Approach to Explore the Potential Information Application in Senior Karaoke Community

In the commercial world, design ethnographers look into people’s behaviors and thoughts to discover the broad patterns of everyday experiences that are specifically relevant for the conception, design and development of new products and services. An understanding of the social and cultural contexts generated through an ethnographic approach usually contributes to better product or service designs. However, compared to the classic ethnographic study, the design ethnography usually has a short duration and a quick investigation of the field sites without many details. Also, since the application of technology or potential technology is central to many modern design ethnography studies, those studies had a technology application target in the first place of researchers arriving at the field sites. In this paper, we argued for a more “classic” way of doing design ethnography, which means appropriating the open attitudes and immersive engagements with the field with a longer design ethnography research period than the common quick-and-dirty ethnography. This approach makes it possible to get an in-depth understanding of the field for better design that addresses the actual needs of users in their everyday lives. This paper reported a nine-month design ethnography study with a senior karaoke community, and the researchers kept their attitude open while collecting qualitative data. The research findings indicated the importance of researchers’ immersion with the community and being natural to the data collection. Applying this ethnographic design approach in field study revealed some hidden patterns of social phenomena and inspired various perspectives of product designs.