The EthnogBlog

Ethnographic musings on design anthropology in the service of undergraduate education.

[ethnoghouse]

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Reflection #1 - Two Worlds of Design Anthropology

The Contrasting Perspectives of S.P.I.R.E. and the d.school

 In the last decade, “Design Anthropology” has emerged as a vital movement among practicing anthropologists. The reason is not difficult to discern. A great multitude of products and services – extending from tangible products like phones and software APPs, to the design of “strategies for innovation” – can be and are being developed employing a variety of “design thinking” practices. And much about “design thinking” has affinities to the bundle of qualitative methods that social and cultural anthropologists normally categorize as “ethnography.”  Yet the resemblance is not exact, and the affinities between design and ethnography are elective.

A provisional characterization of “Design Anthropology” is challenging owing to the diversity of practices that “Design Anthropology” refers to. Variation in approaches to “design thinking,” are multiplied by variation in anthropological applications by individual practitioners.

In this post, I offer a provisional characterization of “Design Anthropology” based on two propositions:

1st Proposition

The short version: While ethnography originated in anthropology and was then applied in the “real world”, “design thinking” originated in the “real world” and was later adopted by anthropological ethnographers (who came to call themselves “Design Anthropologists).

 The long version: “Ethnography” initially took methodological shape among academic social and cultural anthropologists. In several waves, beginning in the 1950’s, ethnographic practices were extended to applied work in the public and private sector.  By the 1990’s “ethnography” had been adopted by practitioners with no background in anthropology.  

In contrast, “design thinking” first emerged in the public and private sectors, and in academic departments focused on design. This seems to have occurred at least a decade in advance of the emergence of “Design Anthropology.” Thus, whereas ethnography was from the outset an anthropological practice, “Design Anthropology” involves anthropologists reworking their methodological toolkits in order to integrate extra-disciplinary traditions of “design thinking.”  

Stated so simply, this contrast is no doubt overstated. In this regard, two finer points are worth making. First, ethnography in applied practice developed in novel ways that quickly differentiated applied ethnography from academic ethnography.

Additionally, it seems likely that the affinity anthropological ethnographers feel for “design thinking” stems from the fact that it incorporates anthropological perspectives.

2nd Proposition:

The short version: Some of the variation in “Design Anthropology” derives from different schools of “design thinking.” “Design thinking” has at least two major centers: (1) the “participatory design” movement in Scandinavia and northern Europe, and (2) the “human-centered design” movement associated with the d.school at Stanford University and leading design firms like IDEO.

 The long version: Given the premise that “design thinking” emerged outside of anthropology, it seems reasonable to suppose that some of the variation in “Design Anthropology” is related variations in “design thinking” external to anthropology.  Provisionally, it appears that this is the case in relation to two major centers of design thinking:

S.P.I.R.E. One center is the “participatory design” movement in northern Europe and Scandinavia, which strongly influenced the distinctive tradition in “Design Anthropology” centered at the University of Southern Denmark and Aberdeen University in Scotland, hereafter referred to as the S.P.I.R.E. approach. It has the following characteristics:

Key concept: “participatory design / innovation”

Institutional grounding: ”Public sector / labor unions

Goal: Democratizing work processes

Strong academic component with respect to anthropology

Strong conceptualization / focus on anthropological significance of design.

d.School A second center is the “human-centered design” movement at Stanford (which appears closely related to the practices of major design firms like IDEO). “Human centered design” appears to be particularly influential among practicing “design anthropologists” in the greater San Francisco area (and the networks that radiate beyond the Bay area to Seattle, Portland, and elsewhere).

Key concept: “human centered design”

Institutional grounding: Private sector / design firms

Goal: Improving consumer products and services

Weak academic component with respect to anthropology

Weak conceptualization /focus on toolkit and process of design.

NOTE ADDED MARCH 16, 2017 

This post has been updated and republished on the Medium Magazine Learn, Teach, and Practice Design Ethnography - at this URL: https://medium.com/learn-teach-and-practice-design-ethnography

[ethnoghouse]

What is a Design Ethnography Certificate? (Part two)

Here it is! In its Spring Semester 2017, soft launch form! Contact me if you have questions!

ETHNO 460 - Ethnography at the Speed of Industry: (1-0-1) (F,S,Su) Applying anthropological ethnography in fast-paced research settings and the unique contributions of well-designed, multi-method qualitative research in service and product design, consumer insights, and organizational innovation. PREREQ: Upper-division standing.

ETHNO 461 - Ethical Ethnography: (1-0-1) (F,S,Su)  Reflect on codes of ethics from relevant professional societies, apply these statements to case studies and a potential research problem, consider ethical challenges, and complete CITI training in human subjects’ research. PREREQ: Upper-division standing.

ETHNO 462 Asking and Listening: (1-0-1) (F,S,Su)  Practice the application of varied deep listening and interview techniques in an iterative research process in a fast-paced environment.  PREREQ: Upper-division standing.

ETHNO 463 Observer Toolkits: (1-0-1) (F,S,Su)  Practice the application of diverse observational techniques in an iterative research process in a fast-paced environment.

ETHNO 464 Just Enough Research: (1-0-1) (F,S,Su) Identify research problems suitable for ethnographic research, form collaborative teams, and experiment with research methods appropriate to informing service and product design, consumer insights, and organizational innovation. PREREQ: Upper-division standing.

ETHNO 465 Ethnography and User-Centered Design: (1-0-1) (F,S,Su) Explore the basic principles of ethnographically-informed human centered design, in an iterative cycle of composing personas, identifying needs and problems, and collecting and analyzing data on user responses to possible solutions. PREREQ: Upper-division standing.

ETHNO 466 Planning Productive Fieldwork: (1-0-1) (F,S,Su) Practice constructing proposals for conducting ethical fieldwork valuable to solving a real world problem, culminating in negotiating permission to conduct research with a public or private sector stakeholder, and obtaining appropriate human subjects’ research approval. PREREQ: Upper-division standing.

ETHNO 467 Going Deeper With Theory: (1-0-1) (F,S,Su) Explore the contribution of anthropological theory to effective research practice, and the unique contributions theoretically informed multi-method ethnography can make to varied industry problems. Emphasis on fundamentals of current anthropological science. PREREQ: Upper-division standing.

ETHNO 468 Lean and Rapid Reporting: (1-0-1) (F,S,Su) Prepare and communicate findings to decision makers in a variety of roles. Make the case for the value of qualitative, ethnographic research in oral, visual, and written forms.  PREREQ: Upper-division standing.

ETHNO 469 Design Ethnography Capstone: (3-0-3) (F,S,Su) Propose and negotiate a research project, collect and analyze appropriate data, create a professional report, and present findings to a real world stakeholder, receiving feedback from a working practitioner in design anthropology or qualitative research. PRE/COREQ:  ETHNO 450, ETHNO 451, ETHNO 452, ETHNO 453, ETHNO 454, ETHNO 455, ETHNO 456, ETHNO 457, and ETHNO 458 or PERM/INST.

[ethnoghouse]

What is a Design Ethnography Certificate?

At Boise State, we will be soft launching a fully online, undergraduate certificate in Design Ethnography in the spring semester of 2017. This post addresses one simple but fundamental question: What is a certificate?

A certificate falls near the shorter end on a continuum of degree endorsements, ranging from a traditional four year degree at one end, to a “badge” on the other. For example, at Boise State, our B.S. in Anthropology is 120 semester hours. If a student declares a minor in Anthropology, they will earn 21 semester hours in designated anthropology courses. The certificate is 12 semester hours, all upper division. Badges are generally much smaller, as small as one credit hour.

Our certificate consists of nine one credit courses, and one three credit upper division capstone. Every course in the certificate is brand new. This means each course is being built from the ground up. We are not simply taking existing courses, and re-purposing or re-naming them.

A fundamental value of the certificate is that each course will be informed by the input of professional, practicing anthropologists, working outside academia. This will be an on-going process, as we re-design and revise the courses to continually adjust to student needs and practitioner input.

If you have questions about the certificate, or input to offer, please contact me: [email protected]!

[ethnoghouse]

EPIC 2016 Reflection #21  Embrace Usability and User Experience! An Analogy from C.R.M.

In EPIC 2016 Reflection 19, I noted that a sense of a “downshift” - from ethnography to usability / user experience studies - was expressed by some practitioners. I respect the anxieties that this expresses, but I also suspect this glass half empty vision may be too dour. There is always another side to the story. 

I would love to talk with ethnographers - or practitioners with an ethnographic focus -whose work now centers in usability and user experience. I would like to learn more about how you bring the traditional strengths of anthropology and ethnography to bear in your work. This post explains why.

For me, the downshift discussions brought up memories of an undergraduate seminar I attended back in 1985. Our professor, an academic archaeologist, invited Cultural Resource Managers from the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, and other federal and state agencies, and private firms, to come in and talk about their work.

The concern expressed at the time was this: Is this really archaeology? 

I suspect many academically trained archaeologists doubted whether C.R.M. was really archaeology. And indeed, the limited testing and the surveys conducted to “mitigate” competing interests often seemed far removed from “real” archaeology. I recall papers that reported how many holes had been dug, to what depth, reported in centimeters, without any interpretation or analysis.

So no doubt much that was done in the early years of C.R.M. had little impact on the growth of archaeological knowledge. But I doubt any archaeologists would want to go back and draw a line between C.R.M. and academic archaeology today. Historians, for example, might have taken over that employment sector. Would that have been a better outcome?

Not only has C.R.M. provided employment for undergraduate and graduate archaeology students - and it is hard to imagine how small and precarious academic archaeology might be today in the absence of the employment provided by C.R.M. - it has also contributed in important ways to fundamental archaeological knowledge. I am thinking here, for example, of the role C.R.M. surveys played in recognizing that the Great Houses of ancestral Puebloans formed a regional system extending far beyond Chaco Canyon. And arguably C.R.M. has made a positive contribution to the preservation of cultural resources as well.

I would suggest that the broad engagement of anthropologists (and other practitioners with an ethnographic focus) in usability / user experience work might likewise both help keep academic anthropology focused on living human communities alive, and ultimately contribute to the general fund of human knowledge. Along the way, the genuine value of such work might make all of our lives a little better as we struggle to keep abreast of technologies that are transforming higher education.

Are you doing usability work? Analyzing user experience? I would love to talk with you! Email me! [email protected]

[ethnoghouse]

EPIC 2016 Reflection #19 Is it still ethnography?

EPIC 2016 Reflection #13, discussed whether or not ethnography is enough. As that post indicated, many practitioners no longer view doing ethnography as enough to get their job done, and more than a few no longer view it as a key component of their professional practice. I think we can say that some practitioners have made an upshift from ethnography to strategy.

But there was another current evident at EPIC, which was not about transcending ethnography to reach a higher level of corporate engagement as strategists, but rather about diminishing ethnography, and especially its vulgarization. The core of discontent centered on the shift to user experience and usability studies, alongside dismay at claims that ethnography could be taught in a 3 hour workshop. I will call this the downshift from ethnography to usability and user experience.

(That this stark division is too simplistic is evident from UX strategists - consider this EPIC Blog: Ethnography and IoT 2016 ). 

Again, some quotes on this theme from anonymous attendees.

“Ethnography is being reduced to a method that requires no training.”

“We have lost ethnography. We need to ask ourselves what we have given up.”

“Does anyone else find their jobs boring? My job used to be interesting.”

“It’s becoming harder for me to describe what my job is. Is it ethnography?”

This discussion came to a head in the Thursday Salon on Deskilling, but the theme emerged repeatedly, throughout the conference. The concern here is perhaps best termed de-professionalization. Several points worth pondering were made, at the Deskilling Salon and elsewhere. Taken together, the points are somewhat contradictory. I enumerate four here.

1. There is no accrediting organization that provides professional credentialing of ethnographers, analogous to doctors and lawyers (that might have been a PhD in anthropology, but one got the sense that the era of an anthropological monopoly on ethnography was long over, and no one expected an association analogous to the American Medical Association or the American Bar Association to emerge).

2. To the degree that a traditional PhD in anthropology might be required, such a background raised many barriers to employment: (a) It takes too long to train PhD anthropologists; (b) Research in the traditional mode requires too much time, making it too expensive and unresponsive; (c ) A monopoly was out of the question, as there were not enough PhD anthropologists to do the work; and (d) Ethnography in the academic mode was difficult to sell to employers.

3. Because academically trained, PhD anthropologists are too few and too expensive, there has been continual pressure to “de-skill” the practice, and at various points usability, and user experience, were  singled out as vulgar reductions of genuine ethnographic practice, while recognizing that this was where the jobs were. Many “ethnographers” were training people in “user experience.”

4. Lastly, the complaint persisted that “real ethnography” - of the sort academic anthropologists did in the golden age of anthropology - remained poorly understood - or poorly communicated - to potential clients. “You’ve got to sell it!” But not everyone felt they could sell it.

So, perhaps unsurprisingly, professional ethnography has broken the academic mold, and is something quite different in its professional application.. Perhaps it is no longer ethnography at all. Does that matter?

I would love to talk more with practicing professionals about this issue. Contact me!

[email protected]

[ethnoghouse]

EPIC 2016 Reflection #13  Is ethnography enough?

While the official conference theme was “path-making”, the unofficial themes proved more provocative and interesting. These were themes that repeatedly and abruptly emerged, not as paper topics or titles, but rather as marginal notes, and especially as unplanned comments in discussions and conversations.

One of the most basic themes - significant because it emerged at the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference - was whether ethnography was enough, or merely part of what practitioners did, or indeed whether it was no longer a meaningful part of their professional practice at all. Some viewed their work as having undergone an upshift, from ethnography to strategy. Others viewed their work as undergoing a downshift, from ethnography to user experience.

Here are some of the comments on this theme that found their way into my notes. I apologize for not knowing the names of the individuals who shared them, but perhaps anonymity is the best course here in any case.

“Our engagements cannot be limited to ethnography”

“It cannot just be ethnography! It cannot be just anthropology!”

“Ethnography is a stage, a part of what we do ...”

“I do not do ethnography! I put together strategies.”

“Our goal is not to do fieldwork. It is to help our clients make better decisions.”

But there were also comments that formed a counter current, extolling the value of ethnography.

“Ethnography really is the ability to tell authentic stories, and those stories are the value we add.”

To which the reply was: “Tell a story. But back it up with quantitative data!”

More on related themes in posts to come. I would love to visit more about this with practicing professional ethnographers! Contact me!

[ethnoghouse]

Preparing with a meal of Minnesota bratwurst on the eve of the EPIC 2016 Conference in Minneapolis!

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I came to EPIC as an academic outsider eager to learn about “state of the art” ethnographic praxis, and network. The conference was filled with rich and provocative presentations and discussions, and friendly people.

If I missed you at EPIC and you would like to learn more about contributing to the development of the undergradute Design Ethnography Certificate at Boise State, please contact me: [email protected]

I will be adding a series of short reflective posts, endeavoring to distill some of what I learned. Your comments are welcome and encouraged!