Summary: Christina Wasson, Ethnography in the Field of Design

This is a paper introducing the history of how ethnography became important and applied to the field of design.

The field of design became an independent discipline as a result of the division of labor, i.e. the activities of designing and producing artifacts used to be done by the same individual, now it is divided into two processes. It is highlighted in this paper that the designers’ job is to communicate their product’s “intended use” to the users. A good product should be easily learned and used by the users. Before bringing ethnography in design, cognitive psychology, marketing research, and focus groups are adopted by the design field trying to understand the user. However, cognitive psychology did not extensively investigate how a product is fitted into certain institutional and cultural context; marketing research did not examine the details of consumers’ everyday life; and focus group relies too much on the users’ “self-reports of their attitude and practices.”

“Ethnography provides a window onto the ways consumers interact with products in their everyday lives.” It was brought to the field of design through research on computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). Because CSCW is trying to develop interpersonal networks, it is very important to understand the users’ everyday practice through empirical methods. Therefore, data collection methods, including participant observation, videotaping, and interviews are adopted by the designers. After data collection, data interpretation methods, such as conversation analysis and activity theory, are used to analyze the data. The aim of the data analysis is to “develop a model that both interpreted the ethnographic materials collected and envisioned a solution for the client.”

There are many misconceptions about ethnography, for example, it was deemed as only “a designer with a video camera” or “the act of observing naturally occurring consumer behaviors.” However, these view points are wrong because they ignored the data analysis phase of the ethnographic approach. In effect, analysis is the key for ethnography. For example, to analyze the ethnographic data, E-Lab LLC devise a framework called AEIOU: Activities, Environments, Interactions, Objects, and Users.