The Pocket Universal Methods of Design, Revised and Expanded

002

AEIOU

A framework for structuring field observations

• AEIOU can be used to guide any ethnographic or observational method, corresponding to five interrelated elements:
  • – Activities are goal-directed sets of actions or the pathways that people take toward the things they want to accomplish.
  • – Environments include the context in which activities take place, including the atmosphere and function of individual and shared spaces.
  • – Interactions are the routine and special exchanges between people and between people and objects in the environment.
  • – Objects are the key elements of the environment, sometimes put to complex or even unintended uses.
  • – Users are the people whose behaviors, preferences, and needs are being observed, including ...