Keri Ortiz
Practicum 5870
Assignment 1
Description Comparison
An Apple Computer Displaying Ethereal Education
The item to be described is an Apple monitor, keyboard, and mouse displaying a webpage from Ethereal Education at approximately 7:40 on the evening of Thursday, January 19, 2009. The monitor is a matte silver gray with a shiny black glass apple cutout centered on the bottom of the frame. The monitor has smooth rounded corners. The monitor has a foot supporting it that is made of the same matte silver gray material. The foot also has a white sticker that names the computer P-120-11 in black lettering. The computer keyboard is almost flat, an odd design to me a PC user. My hands are uncomfortable trying to use the unfamiliar keyboard. The mouse is awkward as well. It has a short cord that is hooked into the top right hand corner of the keyboard that makes using it difficult because I find myself continuously having to adjust the cord. The mouse itself is white, almost perfectly smooth except for the etched detail of an apple centered on the top. The top also has a rubbery gray dot towards what would be the front of the mouse.
The display is showing a webpage from Ethereal Education–our class page. The page is white with red, gray, and black writing. The red screams “click on me” because it identifies a link that can be clicked on. The browser bar is a dark charcoal with white writing. The bottom left corner of the internet window has a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark that claims that there is an error on the page. On the opposite lower corner is a small globe and the words “Internet protected mode on.” The same corner shows that there is a live network connection and that the speakers are on as indicated by a small speaker. In the upper left-hand corner are the browser forward and back buttons of which only the forward button is lit. The other is a dark color and appears almost embossed on the page indicating that it cannot be used to go back. From Ethereal Education there is no looking back. There are five additional tabs open at the bottom of the page. They are as follows: Balance for K. Ortiz, Ethereal Education, Click here wind, and 2 tabs that are application error notices. On the right side of the screen is the scroll bar about 4 inches long and firmly situated at the top of the page.
The information displayed on Ethereal Education is a page ending with the link for the course calendar for 5870. The overall design of the page is aesthetically pleasing and information can be easily gleaned from the page. The color combination of red, white, gray and black makes for a very easy to view page. Keeping the color scheme simple makes it easier for certain things to stand out like links for example. Because they are a bright red they jump out as main points of navigation. The text is written in a very slender stylized font that is easy to read yet stylistically pleasing. The glare from the overhead lights interferes in my viewing of certain text items from the viewing angle from my seat. The overhead lights reflected are long rectangular shapes with a metal mesh of some sort that reflects into the dirty, fingerprint-smudged screen.
Keri’s observation is somewhat different than mine. Where I only describe what the computer, keyboard and mouse look like, Keri also interprets their function. I believe she draws these interpretations form past experience using the website and her past computer use experience. She also goes on to add feeling into the observation. She finds the mouse and keyboard difficult to use and must adjust the wire constantly. I am surprised by some of the details Keri observed that I simply ignored. I did not notice the computer sticker which identifies its number. I saw the leg of the computer, but chose not to describe it as I still had to describe the keyboard and the mouse. I felt I was running out of time and would miss the larger elements of the observation. I found that Keri’s description of these added much detail and believe that I should have described one aspect more thoroughly before moving on to the next.
This is a great observation of the thing. It tells me what you saw, when you saw it, who you were with, that you were uncomfortable with the apparatus and the lighting, but found the page itself astetically pleasing.
this is an interesting word picture of an object, but does not reveal anything about who you are in either a demographic or metaphysical way, what your purpose is (other than being an observer), are there other people in the room, aside from your partner? Who your partner is (except for a name, which tells me nothing of relavence about her as a person), are there any other human distractions?
I hate flourescents too, and sometimes wear sunglasses in class–not because I want to look cool, but because the lighting gives me headaches, but that and the thing about not liking the mouse and keyboard were the only parts of this that were interesting to me as an observer of human nature because they told me something about you, and unless I know who you are, in this situation, at the time in question, I have no idea how to interpret your observations.
Now, I am not trying to say you did not observe, You gave me a very clear picture of an object, and met all the criteria of the assignment that I am aware of. I am trying to be helpful actually, and I hope I do not give offence, but with ethnography, in my opinion, the people doing the observing are more interesting than the thing being observed, unless that thing is other people, and the words on the page would have been more interesting than their colors–the colors, and the location of the buttons and so forth are interesting an important only so far as they represent the human interaction contained within the text, and they do, they tell us a little about the way the person who set up the site thinks about the world, but the words tell us more.i am just suggesting a shift in observational focus from the inanimate specifics of a thing or situation, to the human social practices that constitute it, observe it, take place in it, and so forth.
You are a very precise observer, and that is a good thing…I will be interested to read any further observations that you post.