The purpose of this exercise is to practice team observation and reporting skills.

You will work in groups of 2-4 people. As a group, select 1 of the following observation focuses:

1. The self-service check-out lane at Safeway or Home Depot.
2. Ticket dispensing machines at a public transportation station (BART, Caltrain, etc.).
3. A focus of interest at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
4. A location and focus of your choosing (subject to instructor’s approval).

Arrange to spend at least 2 hours actively observing at this location.

What to do:

1) Form or join a team. Ideal team size is 3 people, but teams of 2 or 4 also work.

If your chosen area of focus is related to an already-formed project idea (your major project for this class, a MIMS final project, another class project, etc.), this may influence your choice of teammate(s). Even then, consider adding 1 or 2 additional recruits if there’s room.

Subject to instructor approval, you may invite up to 1 student (only) from outside the class to join your team if you have a practical reason to do so, e.g., that person is a partner for your established project.

We’ll spend 15 minutes of class time on the assignment date (Feb. 11) to allow students to discuss ideas with one another, and to form into teams.

2) Strategize and prepare a plan. Discuss as a team:

1. Where and what will you be observing?
2. When will your observation take place? You will conduct the observation together as a team. You may split it up into 2 shorter sessions rather than 1 longer one if you prefer.
3. What do you already know — and what is especially interesting to you — about your chosen location? What assumptions and expectations will you each bring to the experience regarding the physical location, the people you’ll see there, their activities, etc. Are there questions you’re curious to answer? How might you go about answering them? As a team, make a list of 3-5 assumptions and/or questions that will influence your observation.
4. How do you plan to coordinate your efforts? What’s great about observing as a team is that you’ll gather multiple perspectives, but it requires planning. Decide ahead of time (and confirm upon arriving to your location) where each of you will be stationed and what you’ll be focused on. Should each of you focus separately on different activities, or should several of you to focus on the same activity from different vantage points? It’s essential that you’re all in sync about what to observe and in what frame of mind.

   Consider different ways to focus your attention:

   • On a single person or person-role engaged in some activity and unobtrusively observe their behavior. (They shouldn’t notice you’re doing this.) What are they doing? What objects or technology are they using or interacting with? Who do they interact with?
   • On a physical location, observing how people move through it and what they do there. How do they act in different situations? Do environmental factors influence their behavior? If so, how?
   • On an activity involving multiple people. Follow the activity, not the individuals. Who is involved at each stage? What do they do? What objects or materials are involved?

3) Get sign-off for your plan. Select 1 member from your team to send an email to the instructor and TA, copying (cc:) all other team members to confirm. In the body of this email (not in a separate document), briefly describe your team’s strategy, addressing points A-D, above, in about 1-3 sentences each. Be concise! This step is a check point in how you plan and frame the team activity before investing valuable time in it. It will also give us an opportunity to make suggestions that will help make the exercise as meaningful for you as possible.

Expect to receive a response within 48 hours, including comments, suggestions, or (if necessary) a request to discuss in person. With signed-off approval, your team will also receive a team letter (Team A, Team B, Team C, and so on) to be referenced upon final assignment submission.

4) Begin your observation! (20 minutes) Planning and preparation now complete, travel to your location, find your post, and take it all in. For the first 20 minutes (or longer, if needed), simply watch without taking notes. Challenge yourself to see the situation anew, as if you had just arrived from another planet. The term that’s sometimes used is “make the familiar strange.”

NOTE: Depending on the situation, it may be appropriate to introduce yourselves to the on-duty attendant, or supervisor, or security guard, etc., to let them know what you’ll be doing. (Exercise common sense and judgment.) Your subjects probably won’t notice you as they move in and out of your observation area, but staff might become suspicious of your motives after an extended period of time if you don’t explain yourselves.

5) Re-convene and refine observation goals. (7-10 minutes) After the initial 20-minute observation, regroup at a convenient location for a quick team debrief. How do initial assumptions and questions compare with the reality you’re observing? Did something entirely unexpected motivate you to re-think an aspect of the situation? Refine your focus as needed, making note of necessary team plan adjustments.

6) Resume your observation. (90+ minutes) After the debrief, return to your designated spots. From here on:

• Keep real-time (rough, handwritten) field notes for yourself. Figure out a way to distinguish facts from your interpretations. Some people divide the paper and put facts on one side, interpretations on the other. Facts are facts, but since your interpretations are only preliminary, they may be erroneous. Capture any insights that arise while you are watching, such as patterns of behavior that surprise you or present opportunities to improve.
• If helpful, sketch what you see. Sketching floorplans, process flows, etc., can be a valuable memory crutch for later on. You may also take photos with a mobile device, but because this is a covert observation, keep these important points in mind:
  1. turn off flash and shutter sound effects so you won’t draw attention to yourself,
  2. make an effort to ensure that no one is personally identifiable in your photos,
  3. no audio or video capture — it’s unnecessary, and requires explicit permission-gathering.
• If relevant, collect physical artifacts. Free and readily available brochures, timetables, menus, etc., can help you remember what you’ve observed and communicate it to others later on.

7) Conclude the observation. Immediately following the observation, take a few minutes to flesh out your handwritten field notes. Capture interesting details you failed to document in the moment, clarify illegible scribbles while you still remember what you meant to write, and highlight or circle anything that might be potentially interesting.

(Depending on time constraints, some teams may choose to disburse at this point and reconvene later.)

8) Turn your field notes into a formal record. As soon as is convenient, while memories are still vivid, type up key observations derived from your field notes. Note that this does not mean a verbatim translation of your handwritten notes, nor is it an exhaustive document of every detail you jotted down. “Key observations” in this context are those interesting — or potentially interesting — points that you’ll want to share with your teammates. For example, did you notice meaningful patterns or repetitive activities? Were there unexpected surprises? Unusual behaviors? Something interesting about how people interacted with objects, technology, the environment, or one another? Opportunities to improve some aspect of the situation?

VERY IMPORTANT: Be sure to keep facts distinct from interpretations. You might differentiate the two using different typefaces, colors, or columns.

9) Debrief with your team. This final team activity should take about 1 hour.

Take turns, sharing the key observations you documented with your teammates. Tell stories about what you saw, using your sketches and artifacts to illustrate your points. Let each person get through all their key points before the next person begins. (Quick questions to clarify are fine during individual debriefs, but avoid time-consuming interruptions and detours.)

As each of you describes your own observations, notice that they build on one another and collectively paint a richer situational picture.

As a team, vote on the top 5 key observations discussed during the debrief. These may include both observations that everyone noticed and observations that just one of you picked up on.

Each team will turn in:

1. A cover sheet with a paragraph describing what each team member contributed to this assignment.
2. The top 5 team key observations list.
3. A document from each team member containing:
   • Your individual key observations, facts and interpretations noted separately.
   • Any relevant images of sketches, artifacts, or location scenes appended at the end.
   • A brief (1-3 paragraph) summary reflecting on your personal experience with this exercise.

Due: Feb. 20

How to submit:

• All generated documents to be saved in PDF format. See instructions regarding individual file naming conventions, etc., on the course Assignments page.
• A member of each team will collect and submit all team files (1 doc from each member + 1 from the team as a whole) in a zipped folder.
• Name the zipped folder following this convention: yourteam_assn# (e.g., “teamA_assn3.zip″).
• Email to instructor and TA before 4pm on the due date, cc’ing all teammates to confirm submission.