Page 228 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

216 Design Meets Business
extremely welcoming and open-hearted, it took me time to dive deep into their worlds.
Fourth, what is interesting repeats itself. Especially in the begin- ning of my field research, I was worried about not being able to capture everything. Taking the value of ‘holism’ in ethnography too seriously, I tried to be everywhere all the time. I guess I suffered a bit from ethnography FOMO. Even though I have a lot of energy, it was too much to be constantly ‘on’. Preferably, I ‘avatar-ed’ myself so that I could gather more data. But, as Barley (2000: X) wrote: “it’s a delusion — you’ve only been there eight weeks — and it’s followed by the complete despair of ever understanding anything. But at that moment the place feels entirely yours. It’s the brie- fest, purest euphoria.” Indeed, it took a me a while to understand that doing ethnography, in fact, is not about collecting a lot of data. It is about collec- ting detailed, deep and especially qualitative data. I learned that it is ‘ok’ to focus on one interesting event, and capture all the details that emerged around it. The conversations, the behaviors, the fights and the celebrations. A talk with one of my supervisors especially helped me to realize this. She told me: “don’t worry, what is interesting repeats itself”. At first, I did not understand what she meant by this, thinking ‘what if I am not there when they say something that is super important?!’. Yet, I gave this approach a try. Instead of focussing on capturing all, I let myself be guided by whatever appeared interesting to me and even stronger following my gut feeling. For example, I traced the development of a board game from beginning to end, and captured the practices that emerged around it. Soon, I realized that this was not an isolated event. The designers had a habit of making things that were not strictly needed to develop design solutions. These insights formed the basis of Chapter 2, in which I write about the importance of craftsmanship for designers. So, indeed ‘what is interesting repeats itself’.
Fifth, moving in and out of the field. Doing ethnography is a time- consuming endeavor. Those of us, who are lucky to have the resources, might spend months or sometimes years in the field. Most of our ethno- graphies do not take place in our hometown. Sometimes, we even need to travel to other countries. My ethnographic research took place in Spain. For about 17 months, I travelled between Amsterdam and Madrid. I spent the first three and a half months in Madrid, a summer in Amsterdam, and then again three months travelling back and forth - sometimes with the design team - between Spain and the Netherlands. The last three months in the field, I spent almost full time in Madrid. In between these periods, I also travelled abroad for conferences in Italy and Scotland. Looking back at it, it was an intense period. While moving in and out of the field took time and was expensive, it helped me to stay sane. It helped me to re-ener-