Half were successful but all were inefficient. Ethnomethodology emphasizes rigorous thick description of local practices by assembling concrete cases of preformed activity as the direct units of analysis. EM analysis attempts to generate a description in great detail of how the described activity could be reproduced in and through the same practices. Such description provides a sense of the real world aspects of a socially organized setting to systems designers and thus provides the exceptions, contradictions, and contingencies of the activities that otherwise might not be evident. Practitioners of ethnography and computer system design have quite different cultures but communication can lead to far better design practices. .
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