A Study on Application of Ethnography for the User Research in Designing Korean Express Train

Ethnography, a major research method in Anthropology, has been recently applied in human-centered design research. Since ethnography has empirical, naturalistic, holistic and eclectic characteristics, it is needed a guideline to apply ethnography into design research in accordance with a characteristic of project. Design project in which ethnography is applied can be categorized by two criteria; degree of newness of project goal(existing user-potential user) and limitedness of worksite(site-oriented-work-oriented). Among work-site activities, technology in use, and user group culture, it should be decided which content to content to focus more than others and thus what kinds of research techniques to apply in the ethnographic research.Case study was to design an interior of a Korean express train. This project is site-oriented and has an existing-potential users. Therefore, video ethnography was effectively applied to obtain chronological data of activity potential users. Therefore, video ethnography was effectively applied to obtain chronological data of activity flow, and participant observation was applied to obtain statistical data of synchronous activities. Case study shows a concrete process example of how to apply ethnography into design research.