Hybrid technupue (Fly on the wall)

“Fly on the Wall” is a hybrid technique. It allows the researcher to be an observer
of an activity without being present. Participants are asked to video- or audiotape
themselves when they are engaged in some predefined activity.
Advantages: The fly-on-the-wall technique requires very little time from the participants
and is very unobtrusive. Although there may be some discomfort in the
beginning, it fades quickly.

Disadvantages: The participants may forget to turn on the recording equipment at
the appropriate time and as a result the record may be incomplete or missing. The
camera is fixed, so the context of what is recorded may be hard to understand.
There is a high cost to analyzing the resulting data.
Examples: Berlin (1993) asked mentors and apprentices at a software organization
to audiotape their meetings in order to study how expertise is passed on. She later
analyzed these recordings for patterns in conversations. She found that discussions
were highly interactive in nature, using techniques such as confirmation and restatement
to verify messages. Mentors not only explain features of the system; they
also provide design rationale.
Walz et al. (1993) had software engineers videotape team meetings during the
design phase of a development project. Researchers did not participate in the meetings
and these tapes served as the primary data for the study. The goal of the study
was to understand how teamwork, goals, and design evolved over a period of four
months. Initially the team focused on gathering knowledge about the application
domain, then on the requirements for the application, and finally on design
approaches. The researchers also found that the team failed to keep track of much
of the key information; as a result they re-visited issues that had been settled at earlier
meetings.