The Future Feels Digital: Integrating the Senses into Ethnography Fieldwork

I therefore looked for approaches to qualitative ethnography that bring attention to the concept of emplacement the “interrelationship of body-mind-environment” in understanding the experiences of research participants (Pink, 2011, pg. 344). I conducted walking 30 interviews with visitors at the Future Museum in Germany, integrating elements from material elicitation (Rose, 2022), usability studies in User Experience Research, and sensory ethnography (Pink, 2011). Interviews were grounded in what visitors saw, touched, smelt, and heard around them. My proposed presentation at WCQR 2023 will reflect on the challenges of conducting fieldwork interviews that are active and focused on material interaction and spatial awareness. In specific, I focus on the difficulties of capturing, analyzing, and writing about sensory experiences in an integrative manner that did not separate what visitors said and did in the museum space. Drawing on a composite of interviews, observation, textual and sensory analysis, I examine my use of ethnographic ‘snapshots’, written and visual passages that attempt to encompass the flow and engagement of different elements of the museum