Ethnography Results Week # 8

This week one of my group's member made an important contribution to our ethnography project and to our final project. The idea is to get some attention away from the actual interaction in the movie theater and focus on the CHI aspect of our project. We need to take into consideration how people attending the theater are interacting with technology. In the theater lobby there is a kiosk machine where you can purchase people and cut the line from the office box. However in the time that we have been observing the movie theaters, there do not seem to be a lot of people using this self-use machine. We started wondering why people do not use this if it can provide the benefit of cutting the line when there are many people and you might be late for a movie showing. When brainstorming ideas of why this could be, we came to the conclusion that maybe people do not use the machine because it does not allow student ticket discount. So when thinking about this we taught it would be really cool to create an application that would allow you to purchase tickets, and provide you a bar code. This bar code could be shown directly to the usher in the movie theater, have the usher scan your mobile and on you go to your movie. The benefit of this would be that people can completely skip the ticket box line and while we are at it we can go green!

Ethnography Results Week 7

This week I observed the College Station movie theater. I arrived at 9:35p.m. on Sunday, and watched a movie at 10:05p.m. This time I observed something I had not seen yet in the seven weeks of this ethnography. I saw a person bringing in a small dish of food into the theater without the theater staff noticing. I was not very close to identify the type of dish the person was smuggling, but from a distance it seemed like a to-go plate from Fazzoli's Italian Restaurant. The even funnier fact is that the person who had smuggled the food was in the same movie I went to see. If you are asking how I know? It was because I could smell the marinara sauce all over the place, I was right!! The person brought in some type of Italian food! I have known of people bringing in cokes, or candy into the theater but never had experienced someone bringing in an actual meal. This experience reminded me of a chain of movie theaters in Mexico called Cinepolis VIP. In these theaters, you sit in lazy boys and are given a menu with beer, sushi and other type of food which you can order prior to the movie starts.

Ethnography Results Week # 6

During one of our presentations in class, a student pointed out that the Bryan movie theater allows people over the age 21 to bring alcoholic beverages into the theater. For this week, our group has decided to try this out. WE would like to observe how this affects the interaction in the lobby and in the theater itself too. We suspect that not many people know about this, therefore when we walk into the theater we will expect weird faces. We want to measure how many people attend the theater at a certain time, and of those visiting how many are bringing alcoholic beverages. Since we do not know the regulations it could be interesting if only certain types of alcohol are allowed. We are planning to go on a weekend night since we expect an older crowd to be present.

Ethnography Results, Week 4

This week we decided to all go as a group and observe the CS movie-theater. We went on a Friday at about 1:45p.m. and this time we actually went to watch a movie at 2:20p.m. We watched the comedy Hall Pass. The observations for this week changed from the past week since we decided to go on an early Friday. We sat down at one of the tables in the theater lobby and observed people walking in for approximately 30 minutes before our movie started. The majority of the people that walked in were in pairs. We observed older couples, young couples, male and females in groups of two or three. We also saw a older woman with her granddaughters we would like to assume. There was a big group of about 12 people, and it was interesting because they were all minorities. From what we concluded this group had hispanics, asians, and africans. Most of the people walked right into the theater without purchasing anything. In the case of the people that did stop to buy food, we noticed that almost everyone bought popcorn and soft drinks. It is very interesting because there are two places where you can get your food from, there is a small coffee shop and the regular concession stand. We did not notice anyone go to the coffee shop to buy anything, and observing the menu they sell pizzas, pretzels, ice cream, coffe, and other drinks. A funny fact was that almost all of the people that we observed went to watch the same movie we did.

Ethnography Results Week # 2

As of week two we have decided to completely change our topic, and since we heard very good feedback from Dr. Gill we believe our topic will be a good ethnography. Our group will be studying the culture of the movie theaters in a college town.

We have decided for this week that we each go to the movie theater separately. This past weekend, I got to go to the movies on Saturday and on Sunday. I attended the College Station one both days. There were many differences that I saw on these days. Particularly I decided to go on different times of the day. On Saturday, I went to the matinee movies at 5:30p.m. As I buy my ticket, I can tell that it seems that the lobby is empty. I sit down in the lobby with my roommate waiting for other friends 20 minutes before the movie starts. One thing that I noticed is that most of the people that were walking in to the lobby appeared to be in couples, and mainly college students or at least that's what they appear to be. On Sunday night, I went to a movie at 9:50p.m. I went to see a comedy movie, and I wanted to see what other movies were starting at the same time my movie was starting. As I expected, the crowd in the theater was college students, a few older couples, and I do not remember seeing any kids.

Dr. Gill's presentation on Tuesday, February 15 definitely has given us many ideas on how to observe the theater. We will write a formal letter and try to meet with the theater's manager so we can explain what we will be doing for the next six weeks.

Ethnography Proposal

1) What type of group of people are you planning to study?
Our group is planning to study the people that frequent the movie theater, in particular, the movie theater lobby. We will be observing groups of people and their actions in the lobby surrounding at two different movie theaters located in College station and Bryan. We plan to study the different cliques and groups that pass through the environment. We will study the people that frequent the area at specific times and the types of people as well. The pre-movie and post-movie habits will be observed and well documented as well.


2) What do you want to or expect to learn from these people?
We want to learn the types of interactions and activities that take place in the movie theater lobby. We expect to see a significant difference in the people in both lobbies. We suspect that the College Station movie theater will have more college students opposed to the Bryan theater which we expect to find a variety of high school kids, families, older folk, and locals. We expect to find more interactions in the Bryan theater because of the variety of people as well as the variety of foods and the presence of a small cafe. We hope to see what uses the lobby have besides purchase of snacks. 


3) How you are going to study them two hours per week?
We will go at different hours of the day on different days of the week to explore the environment. We will also immerse ourselves by observing in the lobby, seeing a movie, and study the crowd in the same particular movie after it is over. This will help us experience the full movie feel opposed to just observing in the lobby. Do the particular movies watched affect the interactions in the lobby afterword. We will also observe the groups of people that form outside the theater.



4) What quantitative data would you record?
We will collect the general number of people in the lobby as well as general age range, sex, group size, time of day, date, length of time spent in lobby, number of people buying snacks/eating, estimated amount of money spent.


5) What qualitative data would you record?
We would record the type of interaction we observe such as waiting quietly or talking in a group. If they seem lost in getting to a particular theater. Types of activities being observed. Uses people have for surrounding. If it seems the people enjoyed the movie they watched by their actions after the movie. Differences in interaction of waiting in lobby vs. waiting in line.

6) How are you planning to interact with the people you are observing?
initially we will take a sit-back-and-watch approach but overtime we may ask people for their opinion of movie, theater, differences between the theaters. We may also ask whether the services provided (XD,  3D, seating) influence their choice or is it location or a combination.

Week 1 Ethnography Results

My team is composed of Stephen Morrow, Alex Miguel Cardenas, and myself. Our idea for an ethnography is  Stephen Morrow's 3rd idea.

"Study of how campus common areas (The commons, the library, zachary lobby, etc.) are mostly used by students. Study? Sleep? Group Meetings? This would study students at Texas A&M that spend most of their free-time / time in between classes, on campus. From this I hope to learn how our campus common areas are being utilized, and if there are any deficiencies in them. To study them, I would visit different common areas around campus at different times of the day and examine what people are doing. Are they on a laptop, a cell phone, reading a book, sleeping, etc. Quantitative data would include the different activities of people in the common areas. Qualitative would be how many people are performing a certain action, and the time of day they are performing it. The interaction of this study would be minimal. I would simply walk around common areas observing people's action. If needed, I could ask a few questions about what they are doing and what they normally do in the common area. In the end, I hope this ethnographic research would allow common areas designed in the future to better meet the needs of the students. For example, do they need more couches for sleeping, tables for eating, or group areas for studying?"

The first observations made can be found here.

Ethnography Ideas

1. Observe how people in the Student Computing Center are using the computers. Are they actually doing school work or are they on social networks, watching sports, etc?

2. Study what kind of smart phone is more common amongst Computer Scientists? Study what kind of smart phone is more common amongst all students? Observe if there is a correlation.

3. Investigate where the most effective studying can be done. Is it in a quiet environment such as the quiet floors in Evans library, a loud environment such as the SCC, or perhaps at home?

4. Study what type of jobs college students work in. Do they prefer on campus jobs or off campus jobs?