The Pocket Universal Methods of Design, Revised and Expanded

076	Observation

Attentive looking and systematic recording of people, artifacts, environments, events, behaviors, and interactions

• Semi-structured observation typically describes ethnographic methods in the exploratory phase of design.
• Ethnographic observations should be flexible, yet systematic, careful, and well documented with notes, sketches, photographs, or video.
• Semi-structured observations are typically synthesized for guiding design inspiration, but content analysis may be performed to uncover themes or patterns.
• Structured, or systematic observation, is formalized by pre-structure utilizing worksheets to track time intervals, behavioral categories, or counted successes and errors.
• If sample sizes are large enough, results ...