Blog Post #5

This week, I looked at some of my classmates' blogs to see what they wrote about inobtrusive research, since it has been such a topic in our class discussions lately. First, I looked at Paige Weiners' blog, which is about fashion PR. Her blog post about unobtrusive research focused on how designers use observation to put styles together and create collections based on what people are wearing, without knowing they are being observed. Paige wrote, "Perhaps they would be sure to match it perfectly with their pants, or wear certain under-garments to make it more flattering or even make sure that the item of clothing is ironed so that they look neat.  In reality, the designer most likely wants to see the shirt when they dont really think about it." I thought this was an interesting point to make, and I had never really looked at this from that perspective so far.

The second blog I looked at was Francesca's blog, which focuses on celebrities and social media. Francesca made me look at social media in context to unobtrusive research much differently, in a way I had never previously thought of. In her blog post 'Keeping Up With Your Favorite Celebs", she wrote, "Essentially, when you take note of what your 'friends' are doing on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media websites, you are researching their preferences for certain things like their favorite restaurant or type of food, their current favorite song or artist, the hotels they prefer to stay at, etc. So... when you are keeping tabs on your friends and favorite celebs via Tweets and Status Updates, you are conducting unobtrusive research". I am an avid user of Twitter, but I had never thought that I was conducting research as I am simply looking at my timeline updates. I thought that was interesting and a great point to make about social media and unobtrusive research.

Unobtrusive research is clearly all around us- especially when we don't know it! Hope you guys are liking my blog, more again next week!