Seoul in Kennesaw

Ethnography Research

Duration:
Aug - Dec 2022
Team Size:
4 Members
Role:
Team Leader, Ethnographic Researcher, Moderator
Tools:
FigJam, Google Docs, Canva, Discord

Applied Ethnography:

Applied ethnography research aims for cultural interpretation through qualitative methods into the private sector or in our case, into our project.

Recap:

Field of Study: K-pop dance club, Seoul in Kennesaw (Sin-K)
Research Question: What influences the members to participate in Sin-K?
Cohering Metaphor: Members of Sin-K are black sheep in society, but Sin-K is a home for black sheep.
Result: Sin-K cultivated a safe space for each member to connect and express themselves without worries or judgment.

Challenges:

We struggled to gather data from a dance practice due to the lack of verbal exchanges, but we have adapted the skill of observing body language and non-verbal communication.
Due to time constraints of the class and the club’s schedule, our observation sessions were limited, but we have learned to fully immerse ourselves and be hyper aware during each session.
Since I am also a member of Sin-K, it was difficult to observe and analyze without biases. I had to take time to mental prepare and set myself up as an ethnographer.

Note: Sin-K is the abbreviation of Seoul in Kennesaw.

Introduction:

I was fortunate to take the course, Ethnography for Designers with Dr. Michael Lahey at Kennesaw State University (KSU). Through Sam Ladner’s Practical Ethnography: A Guide to Doing Ethnography in the Private Sector, my team and I learned the theories and concepts of applied ethnography and exercised these concepts throughout the Fall semester of 2022.

Meet the Team!

Jenny Trejo Romero

Jordan Scavo

Jessie Wu

Janice Kim

Our Field of Study:

Sin-K is a K-pop dance club at KSU. The purpose of the club is to learn, practice, and film K-pop choreographies as well as connect students with an interest in K-pop dances. The club votes on dances, split into subgroups, and practices on the Kennesaw campus Monday through Thursday from 8:30pm to 10:30pm. We noticed the amount of commitment the members input and formed curiosity as to why. To understand the members’ perspective, our team has established a research question: “What influences members to participate in Sin-K?” To give further insight, we have created a cohering metaphor: “Members of Sin-K are black sheep in society, but Sin-K is a home for black sheep.” The purpose of our metaphor is to “... summarize complex ideas and nuanced findings of qualitative research” (Ladner, 146). By doing so, we can focus on the cultural meaning of our study and summarize our findings.

Method:

Ethnography is the study of culture that aims to gain a deeper understanding of a particular group. For this class project, applied ethnography was appropriate for us as students and as designers. Applied ethnography is not as in depth as traditional ethnography due to the reduced time in the field. Although it can be limiting, applied ethnography is valuable to designers because it takes the participants’ point of view. By understanding the participants’ perspective and experiences, designers can grasp the participants’ values and make decisions based on the research. As this research is a class project, we only had 15 weeks to complete our project which was split into four phases: recruitment, fieldwork, analysis, and the report.

Recruitment:

I was given the opportunity to pitch a study of my choice. As a Korean American, K-pop has always been a part of my life, and dance has been a personal hobby of mine. I am a current member of Sin-K and due to my connections, I pitched Sin-K’s club meetings as a fieldsite to study. Despite my involvement in the club, I was confident that there would be new opportunities for me to practice perspective-taking.

As a class, we voted for our choice of study based on schedules and interest. The fields selected had to gain consent and be accessible to students. Since my pitch was chosen, I naturally became the leader and had the privilege to share this experience with my teammates: Jenny, Eliana, and Yanxing. As team lead, I had the task of gaining consent to access the field. I gave a detailed and transparent explanation of the project to the executive board of Sin-K and received consent fairly quickly.

Fieldwork:

Problem Statement
The current state of the interactive kiosk has focused primarily on providing users with contactless payment services. What exisiting products/services fail to address is personalizations, recommendations, and heavy focus on transactions. Our interactive kiosk strives to address this gap by providing a fun, engaging, personal, and time-efficient way to shop with online order pick up and seasonal color analysis.

Vision Statement
The current state of the interactive kiosk has focused primarily on providing users with contactless payment services. What exisiting products/services fail to address is personalizations, recommendations, and heavy focus on transactions. Our interactive kiosk strives to address this gap by providing a fun, engaging, personal, and time-efficient way to shop with online order pick up and seasonal color analysis.

During observation, we watched, talked, and interacted with the members of Sin-K. There were differences in the observation session when I was with my fellow research members and when I was without. When I was with the other researchers, the Sin-K members were more aware of their actions and had slightly different demeanors and less interactions with me. When I was observing alone, I noticed a more natural interaction between Sin-K members as they were more comfortable with me. I also noticed I was able to gather clearly and more detailed data when I was alone. As team leader, I did minor things such as giving directions, answering questions, and making sure the researchers were okay. But, when I was alone, I utilized that extra time to establish my mindset as a ethnographer and not a Sin-K member. It gave me time to set aside any biases and observe the field with empathy.

We interviewed four members of Sin-K. My role as team leader was to find potential interviewees, write the consent forms, and make sure we conducted with good ethics. After receiving the signed consent forms, I moderated each interview, and the other researchers facilitated. Each interview was roughly 45 mins to an hour. Our first interviewee was Zaria, a member who had been in Sin-K when the club was created in 2018. She did take a break, but came back to the club because of the community. Our second interviewee was Grace, a member who had been a member for a year. Grace mentioned how the club was different to her past dance experience as she believed dance groups to be toxic. She was pleasantly surprised to have found a community that was open-minded and accepting of each other. Our third interviewee was Amaya, who had been with Sin-K for a year. She stated she doesn’t worry about being judged in Sin-K whereas she would in other environments. Our last interviewee was Autumn, the current president of Sin-K. We got to receive another perspective as to all the hard work she has to put in. But like the other interviewees, she loves everyone so much that Sin-K became her comfort zone from her stressful life. All our interviewees' statements were lining up with our observation. As a result, we were able to hypothesize our answer to the research question and move onto our analysis.

Analysis:

Within our journals, we were able to analyze in our field notes that helped narrow down our data. As we had individual data, we came together to draw conclusions as a team. I asked the researcher to think about common patterns within their journals so we could make categories. As a team, we made two ordered matrices, one for observations and one for interviews. An ordered matrix is a “conceptually clustered… table that summarizes how participants interacted with or answered questions about the particular product” (Ladner, 151). In our case, it organized our findings of how participants’ actions or statements answered our research question.

For the observation matrix, we decided on these categories:

How do Sin-K members engage during the club meetings?
How do different displays of affection inspire members to continue participation?
How do relationships formed in Sin-K encourage membership?
How does Sin-K allow them to express themselves?
How does their interest in dance influence their participation in Sin-K?

For the interview matrix, we decided on these categories:

What made you join Sin-K?
How does dance influence their decision to participate in Sin-K?
How do they feel a sense of community within Sin-K?
How does Sin-K affect their time management in their life?
How is Sin-K a valuable way to spend their free time?

I wrote each category as a question because it prevented any confusion as to the meaning, and it helped our team find specific data to match. After deciding on the categories, we all found examples of each category and wrote our findings into the table. When that was complete, I noticed that there were many influences. But the most consistent and prevalent is how all these influences created a safe space for the members to freely be themselves. Once we established our answer, we decided to correlate Sin-K members to “black sheep.” I told the other researchers that liking K-pop is a niche. I believe Sin-K is an unrecognized club within KSU and I personally felt like a black sheep outside of the club. But together we share a common interest and that becomes comforting and normal. With our research analysis, answer, and metaphor, we were able to organize our conclusions and begin our report.

Refinement:

Through our usability testing, we refined our prototype to fit the needs and readability of our users. The link to our prototype is what we created through our capstone course, but I would love to go back, continue refinement, and potentially add an app with 3D body analysis for a virtual dressing room.

View Prototype

Janice Kim

Built by Janice Kim