I learnt about autoethnography this afternoon with Zuleika, and I can tell you how much it changed my perspective on seeing my research that are both ethnography and autoethnography.
In my take, autoethnography is a reflective, evidence-based research method that situates the researcher’s lived experience within wider cultural and historical contexts. And somehow it can be bias but also can be personal reflection in research.
Because somehow we are a living proof of how we have own lived experience to explore cultural, political, or social phenomena that happened surround us. And to be engaged and immersed into the situation is apparently really important.
How Autoethnography Happened in My Research
At first, my research mainly observed the community from a distance by doing digital co-design sessions, online observations, and insights from local authorities, including my sister, who works as a subdistrict staff member.
I once asked her to help by interviewing a few residents. But when she sent me the recordings, I noticed the conversations were heavily guided, framed in a way that led participants toward certain answers. Her intentions were good, perhaps driven by a need for quick, actionable results. Which, as Irwin (2020) notes, aligns more with traditional design approaches. Yet this also showed me how challenging it is to create genuine systemic change.
That realization made me determined to return to Cipadu in person to carry out my interventions directly and engage deeply with the community. I wanted to break through the layers of assumptions and biases that often form when research happens at a distance. And it worked!
During each co-design session, I invited participants to engage their senses, to feel, see, hear, taste, and smell their surroundings. These sensory explorations became the foundation for uncovering the root causes of local issues and imagining future possibilities for their neighbourhoods.
By the third intervention, new layers of understanding began to emerge. People didn’t just talk about wanting better jobs or flood prevention, they began imagining greener environments and stronger community bonds.
This experience made me realize that biases and assumptions can come from anywhere. Even from those who are seen as “leaders” or “representatives” of the neighbourhood.
So, This Got Me Thinking..
I think I was daydreaming again when the lecture is on going. But somewhere between drifting thoughts and discussion, something clicked. When we talked about how everyone carries inherited biases shaped by cultural narratives, I began to see an additional layer: the way people assume things about other people or communities. That’s what led me to create the sketch above.
The sketch is inspired by the Multi-Level Perspective framework from Transition Design, which I find very relevant for understanding the hierarchy within an ecosystem. Because it reminds me how power or hierarchy still played a part, especially on the first time I asked my sister to record an interview.
At the core, I placed the people or community, because they are the heart of it all, the focus of any change or intervention. Surrounding them is the second layer, representing local authorities, those who are meant to serve and support the community, though sometimes only indirectly.
The third layer holds the researchers, designers, and experts. The people like me, who move between the community and the authorities, so we can navigate between the community and the government. This layer came from my previous Dragon’s Den feedback in October, when the panel suggested that designers shouldn’t just facilitate communities, but also find ways to translate those insights into the policy level.
Finally, in the outermost layer, I placed the external world, or those who are often the least connected to the community, yet the quickest to form opinions. Their understanding is shaped by media portrayals or second-hand stories about the kampung. This reminds me of what Inayatullah (2017) describes as the litany level, a surface layer of perception shaped by externalized realities.
When I put this drawing:
We can see how vibrant and abundant the ideas and drawings are. The people at the core of the ecosystem carry many worlds within one, what Escobar (2018) describes as the pluriverse. Yet, as we move outward through the layers of stakeholders, these diverse narratives begin to narrow. Those in the outer layers often cherry-pick or select only the stories that align with dominant perspectives or fit their own contexts. Let’s also see these dots as our own biases based on the position we are all in.
But as Zuleika said, the bias can be reduced by reflecting on our process and presenting evidence for our assumptions. Yeah right, it is knowledge. As a researcher who is encouraged to reflect daily, the dots are becoming interconnected, allowing us to understand things from a broader perspective. For instance:
For those operating within a system or situation (insiders), there is an intense burden caused by the external problems and assumptions that surround them. This internal perspective often feels compressed by layers of assumptions and major issues, which act as barriers that suppress positive energy and prevent change-making ideas from coming to fruition. Conversely, the image suggests that genuine transformation can also be catalyzed from within by applying focused pressure directly to the system’s core, which then creates the necessary momentum and movement for change to occur.
This Assumption Diagram Also Works As Ideas Generator
I found the similarity between assumption and ideas when it comes to thinking. And this diagram works for it as well.
We may select our own ideas from the abundance, but we connect, see and understand them from a broader perspective. Just as the heart pumps an adequate amount of blood to circulate throughout the body. The heart may produce all the blood cells and distribute them through these vessels, to every part of the body, and coming back in circle into the heart. It is interesting how the world is always work in circle.
source: wikipedia
But is this diagram is hierarchical? For me, this works like circle but moving forward and moving in. When we got inspired by people’s ideas or knowledge, we internalized it– we keep it, and we digested it. But somehow, it also can be externalized, by sharing it to the world.
Again, a very circular process.
Bias in Our Way of Seeing
The day after the lecture, I went to Sky Garden for the first time. I always love to see things from above, because everything feels enormous, and I can see details from broader views. But what I sometimes hate, I think my camera does not do me justice. I always feel like I failed to capture things that I actually want to see.
Because I feel like I want to capture how Tower Bridge looks connected to Tower of London when I saw it from up above. Instead, the camera often framed on things that it only focuses on. The whole block of City of London. But I zoomed it, it makes the whole picture went blur! I guess I am not a really great photographer, or maybe I only want captured my bias and ignoring its surrounding counterpart?
This reminds me of “Way of Seeing” book by John Berger that I just recently read. How the technology of capturing things is actually just capturing things that they want to focus on. Just like how we want to capture complexity and how we reframe it into our own context.
There is bias in our way of capturing things, just like how we want to capture ideas or assumptions. That’s why it is important to step back further a little bit and seeing things from broader view and understanding the connecting context that shaped it. Just like seeing City of London from the Sky Garden.
My Thought
Individual assumptions are just like an idea, they will remain an ick on the back of the head if it is not being done or circulated.
Bibliography
Irwin, Terry. (2018). The Emerging Transition Design Approach. 10.21606/dma.2017.210.
Wallace, N. (no date) “Using the multi-level perspective for problem articulation, leverage point identification, and systems storytelling in design.”
Escobar, A. (2018) Designs for the pluriverse: radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds. Durham: Duke University press (New ecologies for the twenty-first century).
Berger, J. (2008) Ways of seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books.