The focus of this week is "fieldwork." Very practical. G & C's chapter 5 details prepared works for fieldwork. One of the "key factors for selecting the focus or topic" in P.68, which is "Is the proposed site neutral?", reminds me of the similar consideration for usability testing:
The usability testing has its root in the CS field. Originally, system designers/programmers use colleagues or themselves’ judgments to design and test their product before release. And it results in many hard-to-use systems coming up because those designers did not take "real users" into the consideration. Jeffrey Rubin (1994) wrote it in his book, Handbook of Usability Testing which is the classic reference in usability research, "the most important factor leading to the neglect of human needs has been that in the past, designers were developing products for end users who were much like themselves." A familiar site can be dangerous.
G & C mentioned (p.68) that most text on qualitative research exhort novice to use neutral sites for data collection, sites in which they are not personally involved as employees or colleagues, or in which their interest is not predetermined by existing relationships.
However, we still have to acknowledge that using familiar site is a bonus if you can put personal perceptions aside. I think it is really well said by G & C (p.69): The advice should be to use a site in which one’s powers of observation will not be clouded by personal preconceptions. And a experienced researcher develops an ability to use familiarity as a facilitator rather than a bias-prone burden.
