Expanding Our Reflexive Toolbox: Collaborative Possibilities for Examining Socio-Technical Systems Using Duoethnography

Addressing harm and ethical dilemmas that arise from the design of socio-technical systems requires novel methodologies that foster critical investigations of normative values, perspectives, and experiences. In this paper, we propose duoethnography as a feminist methodological tool for collaboratively researching interactions between users, devices, and data. Drawing on an interdisciplinary body of work and reflexive methodological traditions, we propose and describe four facets of the methodology: relationality, difference, dialogic process, and critical subjectivity. Next, we provide examples of the methodology “in practice” by detailing how the facets were implemented in a six-month diary study of digital health tracking. We use the study findings to illustrate how the application of these four facets facilitated a collaborative and dialogic process that enhanced self-knowledge and resulted in a multifaceted understanding of individual and shared health experiences. Finally, we conclude by discussing the methodological contributions of duoethnography for socio-technical research critically examining normative values and ethics in design. We contend that the collaborative intentionality of duoethnography offers a unique contribution and unifying methodology that views the personal as a valuable site of knowledge production, positions knowledge formation as a dialogic process, and promotes alternative ways of knowing and meaning making.