Abstract
Abstract This article argues that a multi-variation approach can be a useful supplement to existing ethnographic studies in the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). The multi-variation approach builds on classical ethnographic case studies, where a researcher studies a delimited field in a microstudy of a particular robot, its makers, users, and affected stakeholders. The approach is also inspired by multi-sited studies, where researchers move across fields, adding to the complexity of the ethnographic findings. Whereas both approaches build on analysis of microstudies, the multi-variation approach is further inspired by postphenomenology, where the main aim is to deliberately seek variation – thus again adding to the complexity of the detailed findings. Here, the multivariation approach includes several researchers studying several types of robots across sites. The analytical approach seeks patterns across this complexity – and the claim is that a multi-variation approach has a strength in findings that are systematic and consistent across cases, sites, and variations. The article gives an example of such cross-variation findings in the robot field – namely the tendency for roboticists across cases and robot types to publicly present their robots as more finished and wellfunctioning than they actually are.
Highlights
In the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), the term ’case studies’ often refers to experimental set-ups created by the researchers themselves, where they test someCase studies belong to the methodology of qualitative studies
Ethnography is often the preferred approach even if it faces accusations of being narrow and too specific when contrasted with qualitative studies
Inspired by postphenomenology and other sources of socio-cultural theory from the field of STS, we began to look for patterns across variation in and across cases and we find that the variation and the complexity of the rich dataset to be strengths of the methodology
Summary
Case studies belong to the methodology of qualitative studies. “Qualitative research involves the studied use and collection of a variety of empirical materials – case study, personal experience, introspective, life story, interview, observational, historical, interactional and visual texts – that describe routine and problematic moments and meanings in individuals’ lives,” [8, p. 3]. Physics as a discipline is often considered to be ‘outside’ of cultural influence, but in Science and Technology Studies (STS) anthropological analysis have shown that culture and physics are interwoven even in relation to what constitutes scientific facts (e.g., [11]) These STS studies often build on directly contrasting one culture with another, as when Sharon Traweek contrasted the Japanese way of conducting particle physics with the American way [22]. By using the culture contrast method in this way, new self-evident connections (which might otherwise not be noticed by the researcher) were revealed across the set of reports, which gave new insights into why we found differences in female career paths from country to country An example of this was the finding (which had seemed self-evident to Italian researchers) of the importance of accepting students with a background in classical studies (Latin and Greek) in Italy, whereas this possibility was out of the question in Denmark [17]. (The lessons learned from this big scale project was enhanced and refined in a subsequent study of technological literacy among teachers and nurses in Denmark (2011-2015) where teachers’ technological literacy was contrasted with nurses’ and engineers’ [25, 26].)
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