Page 229 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

5. Discussion 217
gize after periods of intense fieldwork. To see my husband, family and friends. Also, it created distance from my experiences in the field. It gave me the time to talk with my supervisors (who were not ‘deeply’ immersed in the life worlds of designers, as I was), my colleagues, to read articles and question my own interpretations. It helped not ‘to go native’, even though ‘going a bit native’ is unavoidable.
While being off the grid for a while can help to gain a fresh perspective, it is important to keep close contact with informants. They can help you collect data more continuously. In my case, I could not be present a few weeks at the beginning of the project. Similarly, because I had to return to my teaching duties, I missed the end of the project. Because my infor- mants called me when important things happened, I did not feel that I was ‘missing out’ so much (even though the feeling of ‘missing out’ is unavoi- dable). Further, when I returned to the field I conducted interviews with them in which we reflected on what happened earlier. I complemented these insights with the notes the design team made in the shared Evernote folder and the updates that they shared in the WhatsApp group.
Sixth, maintaining an entrepreneurial mindset. Doing observations in qualitative research is often associated with the activity of ‘being a fly on the wall’. In my experience, doing fieldwork is much more than that. Doing ethnography requires adopting an entrepreneurial mindset: identifying opportunities for observation, asking for the possibility of participating and being constantly ‘on the move’. Such pro-active attitude helped me to get ‘ongoing access’ to my own research setting. While I received the offi- cial approval to conduct research at Fjord, I still needed to negotiate access to routines and life worlds of Fjord designers. Bryman (1995: 299) mentions that “simply because you gain access to an organization does not mean that you will have an easy passage through the organization”. The complexity of gaining access became especially clear around the second phase of my fieldwork, when I joined a design team in a project. I needed to gain trust from not only the design team members, but also the clients and Accenture consultant involved in the project. What helped me to win their trust, was to jiggle between my role as an academic researcher and as a design resear- cher. For example, when I wanted to speak to Accenture consultants or clients, I emphasized my role as a PhD researcher doing research on Fjord. When I wanted to develop deeper bonds with the designers, I did the oppo- site thing and emphasized my role of a design researcher.
Seventh, be aware of the power play in the field. While juggling between roles helped me to gain access, it also brought along various challenges. A key challenge in my fieldwork was juggling roles to maintain access to the life worlds of both the designers and clients. Liaising with one