An Ethnomethodologically-Informed Approach to Interface Design to Support Collective Web Practice Around Video

As video on the Web becomes a more interactive medium, as opposed to broadcast only, there is an opportunity to incorporate the interactive features of video annotation into Web video interfaces. Existing studies into collaborative video annotation provide a rather interactionally decontextualized view of collaboration: there exists only minimal understanding of the situated practice of collaborative video annotation, as it may be applied to the design of Web interfaces. At the same time, studies of situated practice in other research areas such as Computer-Supported Collaborative Work have provided substantive improvements in Web interface design to support collaboration. Therefore, we propose there is an opportunity to use an understanding of the situated practice of collaborative video annotation to design a Web video annotation interface. A method that is commonly used for these studies is ethnomethodology, which examines in detail the observable-reportable characteristics of practice of social activity as accomplished by the participants in the activity. We discuss three important issues that need to be addressed so that an ethnomethodologically-informed approach can be applied to the development of a Web video annotation interface: establishing a site for data elicitation, generalization, and the paradox of technomethodology. Having addressed each issue in turn, we then use a fragment of data to illustrate an ethnomethodologically-informed approach to surfacing insights into collaboration, as well as implications for Web video annotation interface design, which would be difficult if not impossible to surface with other approaches not informed by ethnomethodology.