Are design researchers doing ethnography or just using ethnographic methods? Ethnography is about critically analysing people, cultures, processes, dynamics and contexts to understand what’s happening and why it’s happening. This means that the stories and experiences we collect – the evidence or data, if you like – aren’t necessarily the stuff of ethnography. So are we actually even doing ethnography?
I’ll talk about my experience doing ethnography in an academic context, including my year long fieldwork in Seychelles as part of my ongoing PhD work, and how I’ve seen, learnt about and experienced ethnography as a design researcher.
24. Understanding takes time
There’s no time for deep understandings when
we’re focused on producing a ‘thing’
Production of thing Production of knowledge
4
25. 3
Understand first
Witchcraft
Understand the context to understand the needs
HEALTH
teenage pregnancy
high risk abortion
dictatorial law
paternalistic health care
IDENTITY
colonialism
creolité
negritude
slavery
individual
community
CULTURE
resistance
socialism
capitalism
racial binaries
primordial
embodied knowledge,
nature vs nurture
27. Complexity or Consumption
Millenials don’t care about
privacy and they want
everything now!
Actually, it really depends on the context and the
individual. Blanket statements like this one misrepresent
entire populations and give organisations empty findings
that lead to bad decisions.
While familiarity with a privacy-reduced, have-it-now
world may be more common among younger
demographics, it is incorrect to say that this statement
applies to all ‘young’ people. Some participants sought
time to think before signing up, and for it to be face-to-
face, as opposed to ‘instant’ and online, so they could 4
31. Takeaways
Always interpret what you collect
4
‘…there is no insight in mere facts; you must interpret them.'
- Sam Ladner -
‘What people say, what people do, and what they say they
do are entirely different things.’
- Margaret Mead -
32. Takeaways
Don’t try to understand ‘why’ at the shallow
end of the research spectrum.
4
‘Anyone can produce a new fact; the thing is to produce a
new idea.’
- E.E. Evans-Pritchard -
33. Takeaways
Start with in-depth ethnography to
understand people first.
4
‘Meaning is socially, historically, and rhetorically constructed.’
- Cliffort Geertz -
‘The only important thing about design is how it relates
to people….we respond to that which has meaning’
- Victor Papanek -
34. Don’t try to understand ‘why’ at the shallow
end of the research spectrum
4
Always interpret what you collect
Start with in-depth ethnography to
understand people first
35. 4
What we’re
doing
Designing the
right thing
Designing the
thing right
What we claim
to be doing
Designing the
right thing
Designing the
thing right
What we should
be doing
Ethnographic
megalith
Evidenced, innovative
double diamonds,