Within bounds and between domains: Reflecting on Making Tea within the context of design elicitation methods

Making Tea (MT) is a design elicitation method developed in eScience specifically to deal with situations in which (1) the designers do not share domain or artifact knowledge with design-domain experts, (2) the processes in the space are semi-structured and (3) the processes to be modeled can last for periods exceeding the availability of most ethnographers. We have used the method in two distinct eScience contexts, and may offer an effective, low cost way to deal with bridging between software design teams and scientists to develop useful and usable eScience artifacts. To that end, we propose a set of criteria in order to understand why MT works. Through these criteria we also reflect upon the relation of MT to other design elicitation methods in order to propose a kind of method framework from which other designers may be assisted in choosing elicitation methods and in developing new methods both for eScience contexts and beyond.