SyNTHESIS / ANALySIS TECHNIqUE 02 AEIOU AEIOU is an organizational framework reminding the researcher to attend to, document, and code information under a guiding taxonomy of Activities, Environments, Interactions, Objects, and Users. 1 Even when observations are only casually or semi-structured, it pays to have an organizational framework in mind, such that the researcher attends to key details. AEIOU is an easy mnemonic for guiding and coding observations. As a heuristic, or rule of thumb, the taxonomy defines each feature of the observation set as follows: · Activities are goal-directed sets of actions. What are the pathways that people take toward the things they want to accomplish, including specific actions and processes? · Environments include the entire arena in which activities take place. For example, what describes the atmosphere and function of the context, including individual and shared spaces? · Interactions are between a person and someone or something else, and are the building blocks of activities. What is the nature of routine and special interactions between people, between people and objects in their environment, and across distances? · Objects are the building blocks of the environment, key elements sometimes put to complex or even unintended uses, possibly changing their function, meaning, and context. For example, what are the objects and devices people have in their environments, and how do these relate to their activities? 1. The AEIOU framework is credited to Rick Robinson, Ilya Prokopoff, John Cain, and Julie Pokorny, then at the Doblin Group in Chicago, in 1991. Rick Robinson carried the framework to E-Lab LLC, where it appeared in company publicity materials in the late 1990s. For a short description of the framework based on the work of Robinson et al. and the former E-Lab publicity materials, see http://www.ethnohub.com/faq/what-aeiou- framework Further Reading Wasson, Christina. "Ethnography in the Field of Design." Human Organization 59, no. 4 (2000): 377­388.