Chapter 6
Using the Business Origami Technique to Understand Complex Ecosystems Such As the Internet Usage of Households
Tracking subtle changes in behavior over time, such as people’s behavior using the Internet, can be challenging for researchers. In addition, trying to evaluate changes for a complex ecosystem that includes multiple members of a household may seem like an even bigger challenge to overcome. In this chapter, we describe a method known as the Business Origami Technique to map out and track behavioral changes in a complex ecosystem such as a household’s Internet usage. The Business Origami Technique is a highly visual method that uses tokens to represent key parts of the ecosystem to answer who, where, and how questions about the ecosystem. We will also describe how to adapt this method from it’s traditional paper-based format to a digital format in order to reduce the time and effort needed by participants to create the Origami and improve the longevity of the Origami artifacts for a longitudinal study.
