Visual Research Methods and Communication Design

Brian J. McNely
University of Kentucky Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies 1315 Patterson Office Tower Lexington, KY 40506

[email protected] ABSTRACT
Visual research methods include a variety of empirical approaches to studying social life and social processes, including communication and documentation. Developed largely in anthropology and sociology, visual methods typically involve the use of photography, videography, and drawing in qualitative studies of lived experience. Despite the use of visual methods in related fields such as CSCW, HCI, and computer science education, such approaches are underdeveloped in studies of communication design. In this paper, the author provides a historical and theoretical overview of visual research methods before detailing three interrelated approaches that may be productively applied to work in communication design. The author then illustrates how these approaches were adapted to communication design studies in industry and academe before describing implications for future work in this area. methods may also include significant participatory and collaborative components, where research participants use photography, videography, or drawing to represent and reflect upon their own social spaces, artifacts, and interactions. The development of mobile computing technologies, capacious and inexpensive digital storage options, and the decreasing costs of sophisticated photographic and videographic equipment has diminished many technical barriers to implementing visual methods in social inquiry. Yet despite rich traditions of visual research in anthropology and sociology, and despite the use of photography and videography in contemporary computersupported cooperative work and human computer interaction, empirical visual methods are underdeveloped in design of communication research and theory. In this paper, therefore, I detail three interrelated visual research methods and describe how they may be used to advance studies and theories of communication design. I follow Spinuzzi in noting that methods are the ways in which we investigate phenomena, while methodologies entail theories, values, and philosophies that motivate and guide our methods [45, p. 7]. Visual research methods, therefore, may be used to enrich many of the methodological approaches that have been traditionally deployed in communication design. In this paper, I draw on work in writing, activity, and genre research (WAGR; see Russell, [41], for an overview) and the related notion of artifact ecologies from Bdker & Nylandsted Klokmose [6] as a methodological framework for exploring visual methods in communication design. Using visual methods within a WAGR framework entails granular attention to everyday practical activityto processes in addition to products, and to participant know-how in addition to know-that [see Packer, 31]. In this sense, visual methods may help researchers to uncover and better understand what Shipka called the mediated action of communication practice and designthe varied and various places in which, times at which, and resources with which literate activity is typically accomplished [42, p. 15]. This paper thus contributes to communication design theory and practice by (a) detailing some of the historical and theoretical foundations of visual methods, (b) by identifying and describing three potentially interrelated visual methods that may be most useful to communication design researchers, and (c) by describing how such methods were applied in cases from both industry and academe. In this way, I hope to build a foundation for the use of visual methods in communication designa foundation that is currently missing. In the remainder of this paper, I begin by detailing related research in computer-supported cooperative work and human computer interaction. I then describe key developments in empirical visual research methods from anthropology and sociology in order to illustrate some of the breadth and depth of historical and theoretical work in this area. In particular, I describe approaches from ethnoarchaeology, visual ethnography, and photo-elicitation in detail, identifying specific

Categories and Subject Descriptors

H.5.3 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Group and Organization Interfaces collaborative computing, computersupported cooperative work, theory and models.

General Terms
Documentation, Design, Theory.

Keywords
visual research methods, visual ethnography, WAGR, photoelicitation

1. INTRODUCTION
Visual research methods, developed primarily in anthropology and sociology, include a variety of empirical means for exploring lived experience in situ (see, for example, Banks [3]; Becker [4]; Harper [18]; Morphy & Banks [30]; Pink [32, 33, 34]; Pinney [35]). Today, visual anthropology and visual sociology are thriving subfields that leverage photography, videography, filmmaking, and drawing as integral components of empirical inquiry into social processes and social life. Visual research
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methods from these approaches and how they were applied during communication design research in both industry and academe. Finally, I conclude with some implications and future directions for communication design researchers who may wish to incorporate visual methods into their own work.

2. RELATED WORK
Visual research methods have been used periodically over the last three decades in studies of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) and human computer interaction (HCI). CSCW researchers deploying ethnomethodology, for example, have productively used both photography and (especially) videography in data collection, documentation, and analysis of everyday computing environments (see, for example, Dourish [13]; Hutchins & Klausen [20]; Suchman [49]). Additionally, DiSalvo and Vertesi [12], Hall, Jones, Richardson, and Hodgson [17], and Fleron and Pederson [16] have all described the potential of visual methods in studies of human computer interaction. More recently, Farr-Wharton, Foth, and Choi [14] and Jarvis, Cameron, and Boucher [21] have used visual methods (particularly photography) to both study and implement HCI design projects. And work in related areas such as computer science education and game design has similarly advocated for more robust visual research methods, including visual ethnography (see, for example, Fincher, Tenenberg, and Robins [15], and Chan [8]). Research using visual methods in CSCW and HCI has adapted a variety of approaches (described in more detail below) in both studies of practice and design-oriented projects. In communication design, however, empirical visual research methods have been largely overlooked. In SIGDOC Proceedings (accessed through the ACM Digital Library) searches for visual ethnography, visual research methods, visual methods, and photo-elicitation yield no results. This is not to say that communication design researchers have ignored the visualon the contrary, as a field we have shown particular interest in visual communication from several perspectives. So what accounts for this discrepancy? Visual research methods, typically deployed in rich qualitative studies of practical activity, have been largely absent from studies in affiliated disciplines such as technical and professional communication, composition, rhetoric, and writing studies. Instead, approaches to the visual in these fields have tended to be either orthogonal or parallel to work in visual anthropology or visual sociology. For example, communication design research on information visualization or usability (via eyetracking devices) might be seen as orthogonal to approaches such as visual ethnography, where photography and videography are used in data collection, analysis, and representation of complex groups over extended fieldwork periods. Similarly, communication design research exploring visual rhetorics might be seen as parallel to empirical visual methods; in studies of visual rhetoric, approaches tend to focus on designed artifacts and their reception and analysis (rather than their production). Despite the lack of formalized discussion of visual methods within the SIGDOC community, researchers are indeed generating visuals during empirical research and design projects. For example, Racadio, Rose, and Boyd [36] described a mobile application design project informed by anthropology, and they used photography extensively during prototyping, user experience, and implementation. There is an opportunity, however, for more researchers to build robust and theoretically informed incorporations of visual methods into studies of communication design. In particular, visual methods can be more

meaningfully deployed throughout communication design research processes, so that photography and videography become more than merely illustrative. In the following section, I describe some of the key developments in empirical visual research methods from anthropology and sociology in order to build a stronger historical and theoretical foundation for adapting such approaches to communication design.

3. DEVELOPMENTS IN VISUAL RESEARCH METHODS

Howard Becker argued that anthropologists and sociologists have been using photographs ever since the beginnings of both disciplines, but have never been able to agree on just how these images should be used or to what ends [4, p. 193]. Indeed, much of the overlapping scholarship on visual methods in sociology and anthropology involves comparison, congruency, and even occasional disputes. Historically, the social sciences are disciplines of words (see, for example, Clifford & Marcus [11]), and have thus been uneasy with visual representations as valid forms of empirical inquiry. But in the 1960s, social scientists began to better leverage the potential of photography and film for documenting and analyzing aspects of culture and social life [4, p. 194]. Stazs [48], Chaplin [9], and Harper [18] have written histories of visual sociology, while the history of visual anthropology is covered well by Morphy and Banks [30], MacDougall [26], Ruby [39], and Pinney [35]. Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, anthropology experienced a strong epistemic and reflexive turn, and visual research moved away from traditional (objective-realist) forms of data collection and representation toward explorations of intersubjectivity. More recent work among visual researchers in both sociology and anthropology complicates the ontological properties of photographs, videos, and drawings, taking reflexive approaches to visual phenomena in fieldwork (see Harper [19]; Pink [32, 33, 34]; and Ruby [38]). Visual sociologists such as Knowles and Sweetman argued that visual methods include ways of doing research that generate and employ visual material as an integral part of the research process [23, p. 5]. Spencer [44] argued that visual material may provide additional, qualitatively different forms of thick description in studies of social life that can help lead to new theories and understandings. Similarly foundational ideas in reflexive visual anthropology may be found in the work of Ruby [39], Banks [3], and Pink [33]. Banks and Pink each draw from their own empirical fieldwork with visual methods to theorize general approaches that have had a lasting impact on the disciplinary development of visual anthropology (and, by extension, related fields). These anthropologists argued that visual research enables wider frames of analysis that may help account for the complex entanglements of human social relations and the spaces and artifacts which mediate them. A common theme in contemporary visual research methods, however, is the understanding that such methods must be deployed within broader methodologies, alongside other forms of fieldwork (such as fieldnotes and interviews, or via the collection and analysis of participant artifacts). Given the complex and intertwined histories of visual sociology and visual anthropology, a variety of approaches have been developed to address two broad perspectives on conducting visual research: (a) creating visual representations of and about ones object of study as a means for better documenting, analyzing, and understanding participant experience, and (b) working with others

to produce or discuss visual representations in a participatory way. What follows is an overview of foundational approaches, accompanied by representative scholarship: Visual ethnography: Using visuals (typically videography and/or photography) in reflexive processes of intersubjective meaning-making and representation about a particular group or culture. Visual ethnography is a methodology that often combines multiple visual methods (drawing, photography, videography) for exploring lived experience. See Banks [3]; Pink [32, 33]. Ethnoarchaeology: The visual documentation, analysis, and representation of systemic material assemblages. Ethnoarchaeology is a methodology that involves the ethnographic study of contemporary cultures, focusing on relationships between human behaviors and material contexts. See Arnold, et al. [1]. Ethnomethodology: Sociological approach often deployed in CSCW and HCI using (typically) videography to produce detailed analyses of socially situated talk and visually available behavior [2, p. 395]. For ethnomethdological studies that theorize visual methods, see Mondada [29], and Ball and Smith [2]. Documentary photography: The use of photography in fieldwork to both document and represent ones object of study. For social researchers (rather than photographers), documentary photography is a visual method (rather than a methodology). See Brown [7]; Harper [18, 19]; Knowles and Sweetman [23]. Rephotography: Also known as repeat photography; involves the in situ photographic duplication of an archival (or other extant) image in order to illustrate change (spatial, material, social) over some unit of time. Rephotography is a visual method (rather than a methodology). See Klett [22], and Rieger [37]. Content Analysis: Systematic analyses of (typically) large sets of visual material (e.g., advertisements or archival photographs). Content analysis is a methodology that may involve several visual methods. See Bock et al. [5], and Krippendorf [24]. Photo or video diary: An autoethnographic or participatory method where one compiles visual fieldnotes and perspectives of lived experience. See Chaplin [9]; Mitchell [28]; Pink [33]. Photo-elicitation: An intersubjective method wherein photographs are discussed with research participants in (typically) the context of a semi-structured interview; photos may be produced by the researcher, they may be archival, or even the participants own. See Banks [3], Lapenta [25], Mitchell [28], Pink [33]. Participant drawing: A participatory method, often used with children, in which research participants produce drawings rooted in lived experience. See Mitchell [28]. Photovoice: Participatory method in which a researcher works with participants to scaffold ways of seeing and representing lived experience through photography; often involves a specific prompt (e.g., participants photograph

what they perceive to be safe community spaces). See Mitchell [28]. By no means is this an exhaustive list of visual research methods or methodologies; instead, I have detailed some of the key forms of visual research currently practiced in the social sciences. While many of these approaches may be adapted to work in communication design, I detail next how aspects of ethnoarchaeology, visual ethnography, and photo-elicitation may be particularly useful in our field.

3.1 Ethnoarchaeology
In ethnoarchaeology, the notion of systemic context entails the behavioral system in which artifacts participate in everyday life [1, p. 124]. One of the primary advantages of using photography and videography throughout fieldwork is the ability to capture much more detail than might otherwise be possible through written observational fieldnotes alone. For example, in studies of situated communicative practice, visual methods yield significant granularity, giving researchers the ability to carefully detail and study the material assemblages and arrangements of a given research participant (or group of participants). Over the course of fieldwork, such methods allow researchers to document and analyze changes, adaptations, disruptions, or ad hoc additions to participants systemic contexts. A significant motive of ethnoarchaeological studies is documenting, tracking, and analyzing inventories of material assemblages. More important, visual documentation of systemic contexts allows ethnoarchaeologists to systematically compare material assemblages across cases. As Shove, Watson, Hand, and Ingram [43] have argued, attending to relationships between people and their systemic context is crucial for understanding how such relationships jointly mediate practice. And visual methods are a primary means for the rich documentation and later analysis of these phenomena. In communication design research, carefully collected visual data can lead to new understandings of how research participants use documentation or devices within rich material contexts.

3.2 Visual Ethnography

In many ways, ethnoarchaeology and visual ethnography may be seen as overlapping (and even complementary) methodologies, since ethnoarchaeology is a variant of ethnographic practice. While it is difficult (and perhaps artificial) to draw clear distinctions between these approaches, there are three important differences. First, unlike ethnoarchaeology, visual ethnography rarely involves systematic documentation of material assemblages. Systemic contexts are certainly explored in visual ethnography, but not typically in the same level of detail seen in ethnoarchaeology. Second, visual ethnography often deploys visual methods in order to understand evolving processes of knowledge production, cultural production, intersubjectivity, and lived experience (see Pink [33]). Finally, visual ethnography typically involves sustained fieldwork in a given research site, while ethnoarchaeology is often used in systematic comparisons across field sites. Both ethnoarchaeology and visual ethnography use everyday visual methods in systematic ways: photography and videography, for example, of participants, their processes, and their material environments in situ. In ethnographic studies of communication design contexts, therefore, visual methods may help researchers better understand and represent processes of documentation and user experience in rich, granular detail.

3.3 Photo-elicitation
Unlike ethnoarchaeology and visual ethnography, photoelicitation is a specific field method, and as such, it may be used with a variety of methodologies. Pink argued that researchers should be interested in how informants use the content of images as vessels in which to invest meanings and through which to produce and represent their knowledge, self-identities, experiences and emotions [33, p. 82]. The core of photoelicitation is the collaborative construction of meaning (between researcher and participant) around images (or videos) relevant to the object of study. Photo-elicitation offers design of communication researchers and designers an opportunity to evoke different kinds of participant knowing than they might through verbal interactions alone. When used in conjunction with approaches from ethnoarchaeology and visual ethnography where images are produced throughout fieldwork processes photo-elicitation can facilitate salient participant insights across a broad spectrum of experience, from simple member-checks to uncovering crucial forms of participatory understanding. In communication design research deploying visual methods, photoelicitation may be used in semi-structured or stimulated recall interviews to create pivot points around which researchers and participants may collaboratively understand user experience.

order to address this gap for researchers in communication design. Through more detailed discussion of ethnoarchaeology, visual ethnography, and photo-elicitation, I have identified some specific approaches that may be productively applied to studies of communication design. In this section, I extend the discussion of these approaches by drawing on examples from communication design fieldwork in both industry and academe. I begin by describing the WAGR methodology in more detail, for doing so will delineate the broader strategy driving my use of visual methods in communication design research. I then detail the use of visual methods for studying focus group practice at a media research firm and the relationship between writing and programming among undergraduate computer science students in an advanced programming course. Both examples illustrate how visual methods may provide rich perspectives onand representations ofparticipants communication experiences. These studies were broadly focused on the relationships between phronesisoften tacit participant know-how that helps guide judgment and actions in contingent everyday processesand activityunfolding, tool-mediated, and motive-driven objectives enacted through individual and/or collective labor. WAGR is an approach that combines work in rhetorical genre studies and cultural-historical activity theory, and is thus well suited to qualitative studies of everyday practical activity. In WAGR, activities are complex social practices oriented toward a specific object: the purpose or linchpin (see Spinuzzi [47]) that brings together people, tools, artifacts, genres, and ideas (see also Russell [40]). These tools, artifacts, genres, and ideas are used in concert as mediational means within a given object-oriented activity and within a given cultural-historical context. A WAGR methodology, therefore, attends to everyday practical activity and the tools, inscriptions, social connections, and cultural-historical contexts collectively mediating that activity. WAGR approaches account for complex material assemblages, the transformations of inscriptions in actual practice and their instantiations in specific genres, and everyday collaborative actions. The notion of artifact ecologies (Bdker & Nylandsted Klokmose [6]), when coupled with a WAGR perspective, adds careful attention to the systemic contexts in which everyday activities are realized. In WAGR studies of communication design, inquiry follows processes in concert with products and devices, and participant know-how as reflected in situated practice. WAGR approaches are thus attuned to situated actions and processes that may be analyzed in the data record: these may be observed through traditional qualitative means (for example, in the fieldnotes of a participant-researcher), explained by research participants in semi-structured or stimulated recall interviews, or reflected in a photographic or videographic record (produced either by the researcher/designer, the participants, or both in concert). Ideally, a WAGR methodology is strengthened by a combination of these field methods, giving researchers and designers multiple perspectives on a given activity across multiple observations and contexts of practice. With a WAGR methodology, analysis of the data record may then be pursued in multiple and complimentary directions: through detailed evidence of material assemblages; through participant orientation to those assemblages over time; through the practical, phronetic activity accomplished within those assemblages; and through explorations of the motives driving individual and collective activity toward a particular object.

3.4 Applying Visual Research Methods

Ethnoarchaeologys focus on systemic contexts is similar to ethnomethodological work in CSCW and HCI (see, for example, Hutchins and Klausen [20]). For researchers and practitioners in design of communication, using photography to document, analyze, and represent participant artifact ecologies is a robust method for exploring the situations in which, and resources with which, participants use documentation or affiliated applications. Applied to communication design contexts, this approach asks: How do situated artifact assemblages shape and participate in a users everyday routines? And how might an individual or group artifact assemblage compare to anothers? In extended qualitative case studies and visual ethnographies of communication design practice, visual methods facilitate the tracing of change, intentional transformations of documentation, shifts in material assemblages, and participant processes over time. For example, as a given user or group of users becomes more familiar with a documentation task or application, they may change their orientation or perspectiveoften in subtle waysand visual methods may help designers and researchers document and explore such processual developments. And using photoelicitation techniques may aid designers and researchers as they discuss artifact assemblages and processual developments with users. Indeed, participatory visual methods may help researchers and designers develop rich intersubjective understandings and representations of communication design contexts. In the following section, I detail the use of visual methods in communication design studies from both industry and academe.

4. VISUAL RESEARCH METHODS IN COMMUNICATION DESIGN STUDIES

To this point, I have described how visual methods have been used periodically in related fields such as CSCW, HCI, and computer science education, and how research in communication design has largely overlooked foundational work in visual anthropology and sociology. I have provided details about the history and theory of visual research, as well as a sketch of the key visual approaches deployed in contemporary social science in

Visual research methods complement a WAGR methodology in significant ways; through the fieldwork examples that follow, I discuss three such congruencies (see also McNely, Gestwicki, Gelms, and Burke [27] for a visual ethnography of software development guided by a WAGR methodology). First, visual methods allow communication design researchers to construct rich, granular representations of artifact ecologies in everyday practice. For example, by using photographic fieldwork in a manner informed by ethnoarchaeology, we can document and follow the systemic material contexts of our research participants. Stated another way, we can capture and analyze complex artifact ecologies, we can inventory those artifacts and trace changes over time, and we can compare full assemblages across participants with similar or different backgrounds. Second, we can visualize everyday writing work in unprecedented detail, following the transformations of inscriptions (see Spinuzzi [46]) that drive a specific activity. Drawing on work in visual ethnography, we can trace and represent mediated processes and participant know-how. Finally, we can use photo-elicitation as a feedback measure to improve our understanding of participant practice, and to adjust our research focus as fieldwork progresses. For example, by discussing with participants our understanding of their documentation processes as reflected in the photographic record, we can correct misperceptions, gain new insights about participant practice, and refine our understanding of disruptions, ad hoc workarounds, or items we may have overlooked. In the following subsections, I detail how these approaches were adapted in two very different studies of communication design.

of a media research firm, following a single project among three participants (the director and two project managers), from inception to conclusion (and the public dissemination of their work). The firm has clients in television and digital gaming, primarily, and they are known for developing industry insights about emerging media practices. The project that I studied was an investigation of consumer sentiments about online privacy norms, and this was but one project among several that my participants pursued during the course of fieldwork. As part of their research into online privacy, the firm conducted a series of four focus group sessions with participants in the 1834 year-old demographic. From a WAGR perspective, their eventual object was a series of professional deliverables detailing findings from their study, lending insights into online privacy concerns among an important demographic. The collective motives behind this work included industry recognition and the beginnings of a program for future client work in the area of online privacy. The assemblages (both individual and collective) mediating activity around this project were incredibly complex (and largely beyond the scope of this paper). I focus here on how visual methods helped me trace a series of written transformations (through attendant artifact ecologies) mediating these researchers movements from focus group ephemera to formalized findings. Figure 1 documents a typical focus group artifact ecology arranged by the media researchers I studied. They liked to think of these sessions as fostering attendee creativity, and they provided groups of artifacts and tools to each focus group table in order to facilitate thinking and interaction. Focus group attendees used these tools to generate a series of inscriptions responding to prearranged prompts and discussion exercises (mediated by another set of inscriptions, not shown here, that were held by the media researchers and also documented photographically). Following

4.1 Transforming Inscriptions in Focus Group Research

Over a period of eight months, I conducted an ethnographic study

Figure 1. Collective artifact ecology of one focus group table (four participants).

approaches in ethnoarchaeology, these images help document and represent the material assemblages mediating the experience of focus group attendees. In Figure 2, we can see how initial focus group inscriptionsjottings on butcher paper and sticky notes, visible in crayon and pen in Figure 1were transformed during full group discussions and interactions by the media researchers (whose handwriting is predominant). Verbal responses from focus group attendees were written (by project managers) on the whiteboards and on large yellow notepads, while sticky note jottings from attendees were placed on the schematic to the right of the image that resembles a traffic light (thus situating specific privacy practices along a goslow downstop spectrum from green to red). During these 180-minute focus group sessions, inscriptions and verbal interactions were continually transformed as they oscillated between focus group attendees and media researchers; visual methods were instrumental in tracing these fast-moving transformations. By applying visual ethnographys perspective on social processes and knowledge formation over extended fieldwork, we can see in Figure 3how focus group data is further transformed. In this image, a whiteboard schematic (only partially detailed here) represents major project development resulting from nearly three months of analysis of the focus group data detailed in Figures 1 and 2. Stated another way, these inscriptions represent the thematic and formalized transformations of the more ephemeral

inscriptions shown in Figures 1 and 2, and they encompass a whole host of additional inscriptions that I do not have the space to display (email exchanges, qualitative coding trees, analytic memos, notes from brainstorming and debrief sessions, and social media exchanges). Figures 1, 2, and 3 (and a series of related images) were then used in semi-structured interviews with research participants near the end of the project to better understand the motives behind these transformations. I was able to show my participants how I had traced their writing practices throughout the project, and to learn from them how my understanding of the photographic record and observational fieldnotes matched up to their perceptions of work processes. This exercise in photo-elicitation was noteworthy for two reasons: (a) I had documented and understood things about my research participants that they had not been consciously aware of, and (b) their feedback allowed me to refine my fieldwork over the final weeks of the project to focus on further transformations leading to organizational knowledge dissemination. Indeed, I came to understand the whiteboard inscriptions of Figure 3 as instrumental to the series of final transformations related to this project: It served as an organizational schematic for the industry white paper containing formalized reportage of findings, and it contained key phrases and ideas that were repeated in a series of interviews and articles in the trade press, in a series of blog posts and an interactive information graphic, and through the

Figure 2. Initial transformations of focus group inscriptions.

Figure 3. Formalizing focus group findings through further discursive transformations. atomization of findings via a series of strategic social media posts. In this study, visual methods guided by ideas from ethnoarchaeology and visual ethnography helped me document complex artifact ecologies and trace organizational knowledge through a complex array of layered and transformed inscriptions and genres, while photo-elicitation helped confirm salient observations and directed subsequent research. More important, these visual methods provide rich representations of participant practice, giving other design of communication researchers a visceral sense of how these media professionals worked. Figure 4 displays a simple sequence diagram created by a small student group (four members) in a class exercise introducing Unified Modeling Language (UML) norms during the tenth week of the semester. This sequence diagram is based on the groups inprogress major project, a system tray program that fetches and displays statistics for a given user of a popular, multiplayer online game. During this 80-minute class session, the instructor modeled UML norms and also worked with each small group to help direct programming decisions and evaluate ongoing progress. While visual methods were significant in documenting writing and planning activities, they were only one aspect of the research process. Indeed, visual documentation coupled with robust fieldnotes created a more holistic understanding of planning and learning processes. This combination of field methods helped me to trace processes, to document those processes visually and verbally, and to better understand how the instructor was teaching and helping students as they diagrammed programming sequences for their group projects. A more significant aspect of fieldwork and understanding developed through final, reflective interviews involving photoelicitation, where these details were presented to students who then reflected on their perceptions of the relationships between writing, learning, and programming. In this way, images like Figure 4 acted as meaningful starting points for exploring more nuanced perceptions of writing in computer science education. Yet during initial interviews (which occurred early in the semester and which did not include a photo-elicitation component), participants (save one) expressed little interest in writing.

4.2 Writing, Planning, and Small Group Programming Projects

In this example of visual research methods in academe, I describe a different series of written transformations observed during a systematic qualitative case study conducted over the course of a 16-week academic semester. In this project, I explored the role of writing in computer science education by studying a sophomorelevel advanced programming course. Taking a WAGR approach, I documented (photographically and in fieldnotes) almost every instance of classroom writing that occurred during the semester. Through a series of three semi-structured interviews conducted with each of ten participants, I explored the relationships between everyday prose, planning, and programming in Java and C#. While evidence of how participants transformed everyday prose as part of complex group programming projects was important, more meaningful findings were generated through photoelicitation methods during final interviews.

Figure 4. UML sequence diagram created by a student group during a typical class session. One of the reasons for studying computer science, participants responded, was an aversion to writing and a preference for mathematics and logic. Few noted writing much of anything beyond what was required in school, and as a group, they simply did not see themselves as writers. However, differences between initial interviews conducted before photographically documenting participant writing work and final interviews in which participants saw themselves transforming programming ideas into writing (and transforming written planning and diagramming back into executable code), were palpable. Participants could see, through photographic documentation, just how much writing and planning work supported their programming efforts. This led them to reflect on similar forms of writing that occurred outside of class, and to consider in much more detail the extent to which jottings, notemaking, code commentary, planning, and diagramming mediated their programming activities (and thus, their learning). There are several implications that emerge from this work, beginning with the obvious: The diminished technical barriers to using visual methods in fieldwork means that communication design researchers can more easily capture and analyze the systemic contexts and material assemblages that mediate a given participants everyday practice. Moreover, this level of detail may lead to fuller representations of participant environments, as reflected, for example, in Figures 1 and 2. In this way, visual methods are more than merely illustrative; they may lead, rather, to wider frames of analysis, improved understandings of processes and change, and qualitatively different forms of thick description (than fieldnotes alone). And when deployed throughout fieldwork processes, photography and videography can help interviewers elicit different kinds of responses and reflections from research participants. Visual methods thus offer communication design researchers an alternative feedback instrument, where participants are able to reflect upon their own practices and environments by seeing them in a different way. Of course, this paper is not without limitations. Using visual research methods entails heightened attention to ethical considerations and forms of participant representation. These complex issues warrant additional, stand-alone research. Given the constraints of space, I have touched only on key developments and approaches from two disciplines (visual anthropology and visual sociology) with rich histories and traditions. And I have simply introduced some of the participatory methods that may be particularly useful in communication design. For example, future researchers might ask participants to use photo or video diaries as a way of further documenting in situ practice. Similarly, by adapting photovoice methods, communication design researchers

5. IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, I have detailed some of the historical and theoretical underpinnings of contemporary visual research in the social sciences. More important, I have described how these perspectives have been underdeveloped in communication design research, and I have suggested three interrelated approaches that may be particularly useful in studying everyday communication, documentation, and user experience. By extending discussion of these approaches through examples from industry and academe, I have argued that visual methods, when coupled with an appropriate methodology (such as WAGR), can promote more granular understandings of everyday communication processes and activities.

might ask participants to visually represent systemic contexts away from research sites, creating points of comparison and analysis between different forms of literate action (for example, home and work). As an introduction to these methods, this paper serves as a starting point for future work using visual research in design of communication and related fields.

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6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I gratefully acknowledge Erika Johnson, who assisted with data collection for the study described in section 4.2, and Paul Gestwicki, the instructor of the course described in section 4.2.

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