I did a double take when my professor said we would be doing an AEIOU assignment. (Cue flashbacks from kindergarten) In addition to our very important vowels, in the working and graduate school world, AEIOU is an ethnographic research framework. This memory cue helps us remember to observe and note different aspects of an experience or activity.
Activities – What do we see people doing?
Environment – Where will we go to observe behaviors? What is the space like?
Interactions – Who/what are the interactions we will observe? What are the interactions like?
Objects – What things are people using? How do these objects relate to the activities?
Users – Who will we observe? What are the roles and relationships?
Source: Prof. Greg Holderfield, Northwestern University
We did an auto-ethnography (meaning we studied ourselves doing a specific activity) over a series of days using this framework. I chose to study my “wind down” routine, and the AEIOU observations helped me uncover insights:
- I typically go straight from work to bed with very little time built in to “wind down” and let my brain switch gears, which causes me to take longer to fall asleep.
- Even when I put systems in place to help myself go to bed with enough time to wind down (an aptly labeled alarm, “Your future self will thank you”), I ignore those systems.
- When I say, “I’ll be to bed soon,” and then spend another 45 minutes putzing around doing admin activities, I signal to myself that work > sleep and that I am not committed to my well-being.
- I find it difficult to “switch off” to wind down when I feel there are things I don’t have a plan for how/when I will address them.
- I have developed “mini rituals” like turning the fan on that signals it’s time to sleep
All those insights (could be content for a therapy session) came from conscious observation and thought about something I do every single day. What more might we discover if we slow down and think about the various components that make up our lived experiences?
Daily Learnings 