Executive Summary
The Ethnography of the Campus Green is a study my team and I produced that followed and documented the behavior of students on Kennesaw State's campus green. The question our research aimed to answer was "How important is it to have an open space in the center of campus for KSU students and faculty?" We also weilded the metaphor “The KSU Campus Green is a blank canvas in a museum of university culture.” By doing this, we were able to visualize how vital such spaces are for creativity and collaboration within the school. I discovered that the Kennesaw State community is full of people with unique quirks and aspects, but they all share some commonalities which make them alike in many ways.
In the class Ethnography for Designers, we did a project on Kennesaw State’s Campus Green, this is a place that consists of a big grassy field where students can do as they please. We approached this project using applied ethnography, which is a form of qualitative research that helps gain an understanding of people’s lives on a deeper level. It can be used to study any group of people, whether they are in the same place or spread out around the world. We faced the challenge of getting an approved space, our original plan was to study at an on-campus thrift store but the gatekeeper wouldn’t allow it. Instead, we found a place without a gatekeeper which is the campus green, and did research on that ground. Another challenge would be the weather, if it was cold and windy a lot of people would stay inside or just use the green as a space to walk across, so our notes were very repetitive. As a solution, we would plan to take more hours to write notes on a warm and comfortable day. The lesson I learned was to be adaptive, no matter the situation is imperative to find a solution.
As an Ethnographic Researcher on this project, I analyzed the behavior, actions, and environment of the campus green. The dedicated project team consisted of four members, and this Ethnography for Designers project was completed over the course of 8 weeks in the Fall semester of 2022. We used the tools of Figma, Google Docs, and Canva to organize and lay out our research in a productive manner.
Introduction
A girl is walking across the campus green looking at her phone with her earbuds in. A couple is sitting in the green relaxing and talking to each other. These are a couple of examples of what we observed at the campus green. We were there in the natural lives of people, observing their behavior and analyzing their culture.
In this process page, we will cover the method we used for this project, our fieldwork, analysis, report, and finally conclusion. In the fieldwork, we will discuss the campus green field and how we took notes and jottings. In the analysis, we will incorporate further detail of the jottings and look at them from a professional perspective. In the report, we will lay out a polished magazine-like document that will display images from our field and a detailed report of our process. Finally, in the conclusion, we will review all of this document to summarize what I have learned and what I will apply for the next project. These will eventually go over the entire process of our project in the class Ethnography for Designers. In this class we discovered the skill of observing people and their culture, this can be useful in terms of understanding the user on a deeper level.
Applied ethnography is a complex and meaningful tool that produces outstanding research in culture and data. Applied ethnography is the research framework that strives to understand people's everyday life as a social occurrence. The cohering metaphor and research question laid the foundation for organizing the observation notes. We had a general idea of the patterns we found, but needed to refine our methods to find patterns in our notes. The Green is significant to Kennesaw State University's students and faculty. After further consideration, we decided on this question: “What's the importance of having an open space in the center of campus to KSU students and faculty?”. The purpose of the campus green is for students to have a place to destress, do homework, or simply take in some fresh air. Our metaphor for our research is “The KSU Campus Green is a blank canvas in a museum of university culture.” Art galleries contain pieces oozing with creative flair and originality. However, a blank canvas is nothing more than that--blank. It has the boundless potential to become whatever the artist wants it to be. This analogy shows how the Campus Green is an unoccupied space but can be transformed by those on campus into what they need or want it to be.
This assignment was a class project for Ethnography for Designers, which is an upper-level credit class for the major Interaction Design. In this class is where I first learned about applied ethnography, this is where I learned and gained the skills to properly observe and analyze the people of the campus green.
Meet the Team
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Halle Russel
Lead Researcher
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Kristen Morea
Researcher
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Lauren
Researcher
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Antonella Mai
Researcher
Method
As Sam Ladner said, “Ethnography is the study of culture”(Ladner 15). Applied ethnographic research is a form of qualitative research that helps gain an understanding of people’s lives on a deeper level. There are 3 levels of participation within applied ethnography there is the researcher, interviewer, and participant. We get to better understand how the participant perceives their reality, this is done by recording people’s natural behavior in their natural setting. Researchers are expected to do long-term research on the people in the setting. The activities the people interact with may be specific to a group, whether that be for religious, political, or any other purpose of culture.
Contextual research is used in this practice to “interact with the people in the field and how to take useful and reliable notes regarding the details of what happens in their research contexts”(Eriksson & Kovalainen 155).
The main difference between applied ethnography and ethnography is that applied ethnography is geared for usage in the private sector.
This project was done for the class Ethnography for Designers which we completed over the span of 8 weeks. This project was team based and I had 3 other students in my team who participated as researchers and interviewers.
Recruitment
In class, we were told to come up with a place to observe for 10 hours, a place with culture. So all 24 of us made an individualized presentation of our potential research places and were told to make a list of 1-24 of which projects we would like to join the most. An applied ethnographer should do recruiting because it helps them find the researchers that are motivated for the project. Our team did not have to do recruiting since we didn’t have to look for people to work with.
Our team originally didn’t plan on choosing the Campus Green as our field, we originally were going to do Owl Swap. Owl Swap is a thrift store-like area that was added to both the Kennesaw and Marietta campuses a few years ago. Here students can donate clothes and take home others for free as long as they are a student at Kennesaw State. Unfortunately, they did not give us permission to enter this field and do research, so we quickly had to find a field we can work on in a week. Our professor then suggested the Campus Green, where there is no gatekeeper and plenty of students to observe. Therefore, it was very simple to start working on our research and observation hours.
Fieldwork
Applied ethnographers do fieldwork to better understand the culture of the environment through observation and note-taking. It is best to get qualitative data by becoming a research instrument and “walking in the shoes of the participants” (Ladner 117).
Our dedicated team was on the field for at least 10 hours per member. We did fieldwork by finding a place to sit around the campus green, typically on a stone table, and we would take notes on either our tablet or laptop. We were pretty consistent with meeting together for the same time frame for the first 2 weeks, but in the final week, we started to go individually. Being with a team is more efficient than going solo because when you're by yourself, everything feels the same and it's easy to get stuck in a rut. With other people around, there's always something new to keep things fresh. Plus when you go with your team member you can take 5-minute breaks together and laugh for a little bit.
My only issue with collecting data is wanting to know more about the people I was observing. I would imagine the situations and conversations the people were interacting with rather than taking strict data. If something notable was happening, I would ask the participant what they were doing and why. For example, some Christians on the Campus Green were holding signs that disturbingly protested against those who didn't share their views. Then people started to protest against them by holding up flags and playing music over their yelling. It was honestly beautiful and I couldn’t help but join their cause.
Observation
We did observations by taking our devices, whether that be a phone, tablet, or laptop, to our field and sitting down in a place where we can see all around us and take notes on Google Docs. Each page consists of a header labeled “Jottings #” and then a surplus amount of bullet points on the left-hand side. The notes also consisted of interview and field note sections, these went into depth about our surroundings and our theory as to why the students come to Campus Green. These notes consist of short jottings, such as “sunny day, very windy” these help quicken the notes process so we can focus more on our surroundings rather than focus on one detail. They also consisted of detailed notes, such as an event happening on campus or a certain interaction, for instance, “girl goes up to sorority table and talks about the cause they’re running for”. These events make for great writing material because they are so noteworthy and provide a refreshing change of scenery.
All together we did 40 hours of observations, individually we did 10 hours. We had 10 sessions, all being on the Campus Green, and the majority of our observations took place at 12:00-2:00. It was pretty active, during the weekday there were always at least 30 people on the green, whether that is passing by or relaxing. On the weekends it was very slow, there would only be at most 5 people on the green at a time.
There were many changes that I noted during my time observing, especially in the conditions of the field. Since the campus green holds many events and clubs that advertise the people that are on it change daily. The people of course changed, there was a new person on the field every minute. I started to notice the patterns of the field starting the second or third-day taking notes. I started noticing that the green was mainly a place for people to relax or simply a place to pass by. I also noticed that the weather affected whether the people would actually use the green. If it was rainy no one would even pass by the green because there were no trees covering the area to protect the people from the rain.
From my observations, I have learned that all people are similar in their uniqueness. Everyone has their own style, their own personality, and their own walk; these are the few difference you can notice from the exterior of a person without getting to know them. You can assume who they are and even make a little story about them in your head. This in fact proved that everyone is simply a person on their own mission. Our research question shifted slightly from the original, it focuses on students and faculty rather than just students. It helps us dive further into the perception that people have while they are on the green.
Interviews
Through the interviews, we got to know strangers on a deeper level. It was very interesting and informative to analyze their behavior without them even knowing it. Our first interview was with a Junior at Kennesaw State Chelsea Bardot, she is an accounting major that loves to read and comes to the Campus Green to relax. Then we did our second interview with Senior student Nathan Crockett, he is an English major and was on the Campus green to enjoy the free event. Our third participant was Senior student Adrian Ayala, he is a part of the NATO club and was on the green to enjoy Pokemon-Go with his friends. Finally, our last participant was staff member Karina Taylor, she is the director of the sustainability club and was on the green to sell fresh vegetables with her club.
The interviews were brief discussions with strangers and we asked them what the campus green met to them and other questions related to their experience on campus. There are two roles when conducting an interview the moderator and the facilitator. The moderator is the one that asks the questions and does their best to make the participant feel comfortable. The facilitator takes notes on the interview and can ask questions related to the topic if they desire to know more about the participant. After the interview, our team wrote down our interview field notes. We dove into the reasons that a particular participant comes to the campus green, and how this connects with our theory as to why students and faculty come there in general. These students are the key to the future, their comfort and consistency is the reason we can observe and analyze them.
Analysis
As a team, we met multiple times and would sit and discuss what was happening around us and the deeper meaning of why the people are on the campus green when discussing our analysis. We met both in person and virtually, and each meeting is about 2 hours long. We had a Discord channel where team discussions and meetings took place, we would share images and documentation as to what was happening on the green on that day. The more we did our meetings the more our research progressed into finding the answer to our overall research question. The process we used to reduce fieldwork and seek patterns is that we used an ordered matrix on Figma to organize the behavior we observed. Ethnographers do analysis to better evaluate their observations and organize their data in a visually appealing form.
Our team placed sticky notes with our summaries onto the ordered matrix, then we compared and analyzed the data to create conceptual categories. When you have taken the main themes from your ordered matrix, you can then place them as categories for a new list. The data in your notes can be used as evidence for these categories. We chose these categories by taking the themes each of us suggested and placing them into groups. The largest groups became our official categories.
Our team decided on answering our research question by looking at all our data on a document and comparing and contrasting the main themes we saw against each analysis. The metaphor we finalized is, “What's the importance of having an open space in the center of campus for KSU students and faculty?". Our project found that people primarily use public green spaces for socializing and recreation, through engagements with visitors of our designated space.
Our team settled on our cohering metaphor by discussing the elements we appreciated about Kennesaw State and what makes it special. The cohering metaphor we chose is “the KSU Campus Green is a blank canvas in a museum of university culture ”. The KSU Campus Green is an open invitation to its visitors, giving life and culture the opportunity to grow within its doors.
Report
For our project, we were assigned to make a report that puts all our information in one well-designed document. We put all our team members on a google doc and divided the work evenly. Over Thanksgiving break, we completed this in 7 days to achieve some extra credit
Conclusion
I thoroughly enjoyed my time working on this project as I was able to form new, meaningful relationships with the people involved. It was a little awkward at first but then after a while, we all got used to interviewing people and it came to the point where we actually had fun with the participant. I really enjoyed working with a team, it made the whole experience 10 times better having people that were going through the same experience as me. I learned that to get the results I desire, I must work hard and stay dedicated. Additionally, it is important to keep a friendly and positive attitude so that those working with me are cooperative and comfortable. If I had to do this one more time I would make sure to make getting hours a priority. It was more difficult than it needed to be because I had to squeeze 3 hours into my schedule on a Saturday, and the college campus was very slow. Next time I will make sure to be more prepared for my project so it will be less stressful and more enjoyable.
