ENGAGING OUR AUDIENCE THROUGH PHOTO STORIES

Abstract

In trying to shape product development at Microsoft®, a fast‐moving American technology corporation, we ethnographers continually attempt to engage product team colleagues in new and distinctive ways. To this end, we recently utilized Photo Story, a new method of data delivery. Although not without its potential pitfalls, this method is useful for developing design ideas together with our product team. It also foregrounds the visual in applied anthropology. We completed a month of ethnographic research in Brazil in July 2003, spending time with four families and four university students in Sao Paulo and Brasilia. While there, we collected data on their daily lives and on the role of technology in their lives. Through Photo Story, we brought our colleagues as close to this field experience as possible short of actually taking them along with us. By stringing together narrative and images, we reflexively shared our experiences and impressions of Brazil and the daily experiences of our participants with all of our “viewers”. Photo Story forced us to cede some, although not all, of our authoritative control over interpretation, which ultimately opened the way for us to develop a novel approach of making sense of the data together with our colleagues.