Theme: Sink/drain
Ethnographic tools used: experience, observation, storyboard, interview
In my research I hounded an average-income-middle-America for data on all their sink experiences. I opted for a group so that when I came up with a prompt I would get answer-chains, where one of the participants might add-on or interject where the first responder left off, hence keeping the amount of time I was talking to a minimum.
Bathroom sink:
Kitchen sink:
The Bowmans (name changed to protect the guilty) are a two parent household with 3 kids now in their mid 20's. I caught up with them during family night at the home of their eldest daughter.
After documenting their kitchen and bathroom sink and then helping to prepare dinner and wash dishes I sat them all down and had them share any sink related anecdotes. These included grossest, most creative, most memerable, etc. types of sink experiences, which involved some neat little moments:
The kids recalled the three of them washing dishes one sibling drying, one washing, one putting away dishes. This was remembered with resentment toward one sibling who opted out due to "dry skin."
The mother recalled cleaning vomit out of the train using her finger tips to reach down the drain for chunks.
Another sibling recalled a party where a guest removed and then subsequently replaced dishes to vomit down the sink. The guests efforts were not discovered for a number of days...
Keeping in the theme of repugnance, one interviewee recalled living in a house where the housewarming party involved the septic backing up through the sink basin and shower novel expelling... welll, you know.. poop stuff.
The patriach of the bowmans recalled a friend's mother Rose, who was forever knitting in anticipation of XMAS when she gave out hundreds of knitted dish scrubbers, which purportedly where much more effective than conventional sponge scrubbers. Images are pending, but will be posted when furnished by the interviewee.
Most felt dishwashing via dishwasher was inefficient. They also shared disdain for piles of unwashed dishes and those they felt responsible. All favored washing with most efficient practices, i.e. cold water, The sponge was also identified as a source of contamination.
Needs/Problems:
Eliminate dish piles/ platter build up
sink basin+dishwasher+disposal are redundant
Bug list:
Sandisk thumbdrives
Separate checks @ restaurants.
waiters/servers redundant? See Travaille in Robinsdale
Metal flag fasteners that clink in the wind against metal pole
Tape/saran wrap that clings to itself
Idea wallet:
100 yen houses
Theo Johnson
D.A.R.P.A.
Blank Check projects
hacks
life hacker
Capsule hotels
chonku chonku
queue professionals
makerbot
This sounded like an entertaining evening of fond (or not) sink recollections. It would be great to see more pictures from your documentation of the kitchen and bathroom sink and see what you were looking at. Your sketches are great (love the bacon pan) and illustrate your basic need of eliminating dish pile-up. While nice to see the interview subjects, showing the product/needs would illustrate your case better here.
I like your anecdotal approach because I think it turned up a lot of non-obvious sink situations and feelings - I often tend to consider how things work but not necessarily how people feel about it, but I think you're onto something with how things like chores are affected just as much by utility as unpleasantness. The dry-skin excuse alone could be turned to novel purpose (moisturizing dish soap?).
I think a good next step would be to take some of these situations and ask why - why would a party guest vomit in the sink, then put the dishes back? (I'm guessing intoxication might be part of the answer, but maybe there's more to it.)
The rubber chicken is perfect. Glad you gave us some more context to your stories!
I love the informal approach you took for this assignment...for you it wasn't to just to get the information for your research, but it was also about finding a connection with the individuals.I remember back that was exactly what they would do- they'd make their own dish scrubbers because the sponge ones did not clean as well, which frankly didn't fly by people who where high-maintenance when it came to cleanliness. This assignment made me question how the layout of a kitchen and the whole idea of sink and chores came to be as the standard way of doing things, we're the ones that set that up, which you bring up a good point about when focusing on clutter in the space surrounding the sink.