It’s been said before, and I’ll say it again: Ethnography can be used as a tool for better design.
Ethnography was born in the social science sphere (Anthropology, Sociology), but can be – and I think should be – applied to many different contexts. Ethnography is a research method in which the researcher observes people in their natural environment so as to gain insight into the ways in which people inhabit their spaces, use their products and interact with the various physical, social, economical and ecological systems around them. It is a heavily qualitative research method, involving much participant-observation — observing and recording the actions and decision-making processes of individuals and groups in a given environment.
The anthropologist’s – or ethnographer’s – tool-kit is especially relevant (and vital) to the design world, especially the design for the developing world sphere. The ethnographic method is a foundational research framework, but is particularly important for human-centered design innovation and problem-solving. Ethnography provides a more holistic understanding of a certain group’s needs, desires, and their various ways of operating. In studying, questioning and working closely with their end-users, designers are able to make more educated decisions and ultimately produce a product that is accepted by and integrated into an end-user’s daily life. Essentially, if ethnographic methods are used effectively by product designers, there’s a better chance that the product will fill its intended purpose.
There are several different ways in which ethnographic methods can be used in the design world:
- an ethnographer collects data and reports to a designer
- an ethnographer and designer work together and study a certain population
- an ethnographer, designer and end-user collaborate as a team
and so on…
I think, however, that the ultimate combination of individuals and research frameworks is a multidisciplinary team made up of trained ethnographers/social scientists, product designers who understand and employ ethnographic methods, and end-users (who ultimately understand how best this product or system will be used or maintained). Today, many design firms and companies, including Catapult Design, are employing such a team framework. To name just a few in the Bay Area alone: IDEO, Frog Design, fuseproject, Project H and Jump Associates.
There is a unique challenge that ethnography seeks to address. It’s common knowledge that what people say they do, isn’t necessarily what they do. A stark for-example: if someone was being interviewed about their eating habits, where do you think they would answer more truthfully? In an unfamiliar research lab setting, or in their own kitchen (being observed)? Which setting do you think would yield the most accurate, telling information?
When a designer has the goal of understanding – to the best of their ability – how people operate, why they do the things they do, what their daily schedule is like, when they make important decisions, and so on, it pays dividends to experience that information first hand by participating in and observing the end-users patterns.
This post is the first in a weekly series called “The Ethnography of Design” about the relationship between anthropology and design and how the ethnographer’s toolkit can be applied to build more effective world-changing, problem-solving products and systems. Each post in the series will be paired with – and will explore – a video or article that highlights an innovative design solution or product that has taken into account (successfully or unsuccessfully – and why) ethnographic research methods and human-centered design thinking frameworks.
I am always looking for new material to profile. Know of a good product or initiative? of products that were created without a real understanding of the local context that failed? of design solutions that have excelled even years later? Get in touch! Add your suggestion in the comment box below!
In the meantime, learn more about ethnographic methods and how they relate to design, by checking out a great document put together by AIGA and Cheskin. Click to learn more about and download ‘An Ethnography Primer.’
Rob Anderson is the Managing Director of Fenton Communications NY and has a 20-year professional history passionately devoted to one ideal: to leave the world a better place than he found it. A nationally known expert on social marketing and one of the chief strategists behind the highly successful “truth” anti-smoking campaign, Anderson was previously the executive vice president for GolinHarris. At GolinHarris he directed Change, the name of the company’s corporate citizenship, social marketing and cause branding practice, addressing some of society’s toughest challenges. In the public sector, Rob has worked with nonprofit and government agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, American Legacy Foundation, Home Safety Council, Special Olympics, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Ad Council, Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.
Graham Hill rose to fame as the founder of Treehugger.com, a leading media outlet dedicated to driving sustainability mainstream. An advocate of social entrepreneurship, Graham is described as a serial entrepreneur himself, do-gooder and designer. Graham and the TreeHugger.com team joined the Discovery Communications family of networks as part of its Planet Green multi-platform, global environmental initiative. He also owns a product business that sells a New York souvenir he designed a few years ago, available in 175 stores including MOMA.
Catapult kicked off 2010 with a new design session with 
receives requests from a variety of organizations and individuals. Some come to us with little more than an idea, others have had their idea in the market for over a decade. Some are based within the small community they’re trying to affect and others have never traveled to a developing country. Regardless of the above, many organizations make similar statements regarding their idea. Over the years we’ve developed a healthy amount of skepticism for some of these statements. In particular, we are always a bit wary when we hear these five most common claims:
On a related note, a business plan that outlines first year sales greater than 250k I put in the naïve category. While the number of people in our world who lack basic needs is on the order of 2 billion, the lack of effective marketing and distribution infrastructure in many countries is a roadblock for promising technologies. Establishing and implementing a marketing and distribution plan is achievable, but is often a task more complex and time-intensive than the design development.
How do people and communities change their behavior? We can do all the inventing we want, but if we don’t anticipate how people receive new ideas then we are probably doomed to failure. As soon as we leave, the innovations we brought with us to a community are out the door as well. Aid organizations and engineers working on problems have limited resources – both money and time are scarce – but the problems are innumerable so we don’t have the patience to work on things that don’t work. If we want more successes we have to develop better implementation plans, taking into account everything we can learn about what makes people tick.
innovations very deliberately so that they stick when applied to a new community or market. This requires equal parts anthropology and social engineering, as well as the harder sciences to address the technology (and some things we have to make up as we go along)? Too often our teams going to the field are made up of traditional engineers only – people trained to appreciate new products for the sake of newness only, forgetting that not everyone is like us. But what if others value innovation differently than we do? Our (first world) culture is famous for innovation. I find this to be a defining characteristic of life in these modern times, but it’s different in more traditional cultures. Imagine our distant forefathers eeking out an existence on the savannah; do we really think the serial risk taker was the one who got the most genes in the pool at the end of the day? The more I travel I find that it is more likely that they were the ones written off as a menace to the community well being – a crackpot with the least desirable habits.
Perhaps we need to try and correlate risk averse behavior with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow speculates that people strive to meet basic needs, like feeding their families, before they move on to tackle more complex ones (like saving the environment). The ability to tolerate risk is correlated with security – represented by higher levels on the pyramid – which is distributed differently around the world. What if people with little disposable income don’t approach risk the same way we do? In our case we will borrow to the hilt on credit cards for consumer electronics we don’t need, then still take out a for-the-rest-of-our-life 30-year mortgage on a house. However in most other countries, borrowing is from families and spending beyond means is not taken to the extreme lengths that we see in the US. It is widely known that people save money differently around the world, with poorer people tending to save more, but what does that mean? Financial literature speculates that saving money is a virtuous activity and theorizes “risk averse consumers set resources aside as a precaution against possible adverse changes in income”; meanwhile our culture incorrectly assumes that our present level of income will always be there.
because purchasing such unfamiliar goods represents an unacceptable risk. We have to consider the implications of this mentality when we want to introduce “new things” like an improved cooking stove (perhaps saving them time and money, and improving health) that compete with the status quo – often just a simple ground stove fueled with free biomass. The “new thing” is sometimes just too strange. If you factor in the differences in the way people value their time – free time may not be such a luxury in much of the world– we find that even giving away useful goods for free is problematic! Of course the key to engineering change better is in more observation. Become an expert in your community’s problems and live life in their shoes. Collect some firewood, start a fire with wet wood, cook a meal over a traditional three stone fire… and definitely listen.
In the course of our Startup Campaign, many people have asked us what we will do with the money we raise. The easy answer is, “pay the rent ($500/month)”. A similar answer is, “pay ourselves” – we’d like to start receiving a living stipend starting in the New Year. But both of these responses give an incomplete picture of the situation and to what ends the funds we raise will be used. Because we charge a fee for our services and because a substantial amount of our time and energy is spent on project work, much of our future salaries and operating expenses will be paid for by earned income. That portion of our operating expenses not paid for by earned income is covered by donations and grants – the more donations we receive the less we need to charge for our services. However, to say that donations received will simply go to pay our operating expenses is to oversimplify the value and importance that this money plays. In essence, donations are the leverage by which we increase our ability to bring life-changing products and technologies to those in need – the more donations we receive the wider the array of promising projects on which we may work. Allow me to explain:
