Time yourself for 10 minutes, bring out a field notebook, and select one small-scale activity in a familiar public location. You could observe how customers get into a coffee shop, how people navigate a holding area, how a set of people share a narrow entrance, or how passengers find places to sit on a train or bus. It is important to choose a small slice of activity so that you are not trying to capture every single thing that is going on around you. You are not attempting to describe the entire environment; you are simply writing down what you see in detail.
The most common mistake made by new observers is to write something like “everyone was waiting in line” or “it was a busy day.” Those kinds of sentences combine too much information to be useful for future analysis. How many people are you tracking? What are they doing? Where are they located? How many different types of objects are there, and which ones are they interacting with? What kinds of things change over the course of the 10-minute period? What kind of space is it? Is there anything unusual about the layout or design of the space? Are there external factors that influence people’s behavior (e.g., not enough seats, long lines)?
One helpful way to organize your notes is chronologically. Don’t just list a bunch of things happening at the same time, instead describe how one event leads to the next. For instance, if a person walks into the space and stops for a moment, looks around the room, walks up to a counter, steps back, checks their phone, and finally gets in line…then you should try to describe those actions in order. If you describe events in order, you are more likely to capture the flow of the interaction and possibly notice spatial rules or roles that would otherwise go unnoticed. It is also useful to pay attention to things that happen repeatedly, but don’t forget to note when someone breaks the pattern and does something different.
If you can do so without disturbing the participants, record verbal exchanges and gestures in detail. Quote brief utterances verbatim whenever you can, but do not quote statements unless you are sure of what was said. Try to describe the movement of arms, legs, and heads; eye contact; pointing; distance between people; and silence. Avoid substituting these sorts of details with descriptors such as nervous, friendly, bored, or frustrated. Remember: unless the participant tells you exactly how they feel, none of these descriptions can be assumed.
Everyday objects often provide insight into the activity. Is there a ticket machine, a tray, a shopping cart, a sign, a chair, a door, a cell phone, etc. that influences how people move and interact? Note its location, who has access to it, whether there is a line to use it, and what people do when it is not available. This is the simplest version of a material culture analysis: rather than treating the object as merely an object or piece of décor, treat it as part of the larger social context and activity.
After the 10 minutes are up, do not edit the notes you have already written, but add a paragraph of analysis. Indicate which observations lead you to draw each conclusion, and make a note of where there is insufficient data. Now take one sentence from your notes that contains very little information, and rewrite it to include information about the setting, sequence of events, gestures, and objects. As you complete additional observation periods, try making the same comparison again. It is a small exercise, but it should help your notes become more detailed without requiring longer periods of observation.
