Making Work Visible: Ethnographically Grounded Case Studies of Work Practice

In the 1970s, Xerox pioneered the involvement of social science researchers in technology design and in developing better ways of working at PARC, its internal research center at the time (now an independent wholly owned subsidiary). The PARC legacy resulting from this work is a hybrid methodology that combines an ethnographic interest in direct observation in settings of interest with an ethnomethodological concern to make the study of interactional work an empirical, investigatory matter....