Where the two sides of ethnography collide

Design Issues

Volumn 21, Issue 3, 2005, Pages

  Van Veggel, Rob J F M ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 23944526130     PISSN: 07479360     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (10)

1. I presented an earlier version of this paper at a meeting of the Chicago Association for the Practice of Anthropology in January 2002, and received many helpful comments. I also would like to thank Allan Segall and the editors of Design Issues for their constructive observations.
2. Presently, I'm working in the Netherlands for Royal Auping, a manufacturer of bedroom products. This paper is based on my experiences working in Chicago from 1998 until early 2002, and working for consultancies and Website design companies.
3. There still are too few anthropologists working in this field, and each has an idiosyncratic career path, so I cannot make any generalizations.
4. Designers also have turned to an indirect study of prospective users. For instance, they have consulted official documents such as job descriptions and experts including managers and marketers. But these documents and experts often only describe the ideal flow of tasks, leaving out gaps and necessary tweaks, mistakes, likes and dislikes, social tensions, and the whole array of tools routinely used in practices. Not only are these sources often geared towards an ideal, they also often are biased by their own presumptions about users and usages.
5. In the U.S., anthropology consists of "four fields": socio-cultural, linguistics, physical or biological anthropology, and archeology. In this paper, anthropology means socio-cultural anthropology.
6. Please note that ethnography, thus formulated, is very broad. For instance, it employs focus groups - not necessary the ones taking place in rooms with two-way mirrors, but naturally occurring group conversations. Or it includes what in the design field is called contextual inquiry: this is a narrower form of ethnography limited to the analysis of task flows. Malinowski and the earliest ethnographers did research in pre-literate societies. Later on, when ethnographers studied societies which produced texts, or which were described in texts, these materials also were used as research data.
7. It's for that reason that the training of an anthropologist culminates in doing ethnographic research on which a doctoral dissertation is based.
8. Though these forms are drawn from my experiences, they are not empirical descriptions. In order to ensure a certain degree of anonymity, I describe them in a highly abstract form. Moreover, I have made composites of different actual cases in order to make my point clearer.
9. Empiricism is similar to positivism. However, positivism is more an approach to data, while empiricism involves the collection and interpretation of data.
10. Designers very generally perceive the use of ethnography in their design developments. However, many other people involved in bringing products to market don't. For instance, many business strategists, marketers, and brand designers prefer quantitative data. Although also from the marketing side, ethnography is becoming more appreciated as a resource for consumer understanding. At least that's what is indicated by a wide range of articles these days, as well as courses such as strategic marketing taught at business schools. Yet most of the business strategists and marketers I have met lag behind this important trend.