Although ethnographic methods are still regarded, to an extent, as new aspects of HCI research practice, they have been part of HCI research almost since its incep- tion, and certainly since the early 1980s, about the same time as the CHI conference was founded. What, then, accounts for this sense of novelty and the mystery that goes along with it? One reason is that ethnographic methods have generally been associated with what we might call nontraditional settings in relation to HCI’s cog- nitive science roots, emerging at first in organizational studies of collaborative work (in the domain of CSCW), subsequently applied in studies of alternative interaction patterns in ubiquitous computing, and later still associated with domains such as domestic life, experience design, and cultural analysis that have been more recent arrivals on the scene. Another is that ethnographic methods are often associated with forms of analysis and theorizing of human action—ethnomethodology stands out as an example here—that are themselves alien to HCI’s intellectual traditions