Ethnography for HRI: Embodied, Embedded, Messy and Everyday

Paper in proceeding, 2024

As suggested by the HRI'24 conference theme, the concern for understanding and designing human-robot interactions for the “real world” is now at the centre of the human-robot interaction field. But what does it actually mean to design robots for the “real world”? Who populates these “real worlds”? What are the boundaries of these worlds, and who delineates them? How can HRI scholars who have grown accustomed to the positivist paradigm, still dominating HRI, address the complexity and messiness of these real worlds in conceptually and methodologically rigorous ways? In this half-day hybrid workshop we invite a multi-disciplinary community both from within and outside of HRI to consider ethnography as a methodology equipped to tackle these questions. Attuned to the plurality of human and non-human actors, embedded (and embodied) human practices, ethnography has already secured its place in Human-Computer interaction (HCI) and Science and Technology studies (STS). With an aim to contribute to further expansion of ethnography in HRI, this workshop invites participants to share their experiences and engage in discussions about best practices, challenges, effective strategies for overcoming these challenges, and the integration of ethnographic data with design, among other relevant topics. We see the workshop as a step toward establishing a community of researchers within HRI working with ethnographic approaches, and qualitative research more broadly.