Prototyping the Social: Temporality and Speculative Futures at the Intersection of Design and Culture

Abstract

‘understanding the user’ has become a mantra to corporate strategists — its late-arriving ubiquity only rivaled by its surprising obviousness. To facilitate this approach there has recently been what Ross Perot (homespun Texas billionaire who staged an independent run for the US presidency in 1992) might describe as a ‘giant sucking sound’ as design consultancies voraciously add cultural anthropologists to their employment rolls. The reasons for this are myriad, but primarily stem from a relatively recent shift in design and business methods toward ‘user-centered’ design, a practice that foregrounds the needs and wants of the end-user as central to the development of new products and services. Large corporations such as Proctor and Gamble and Intel have been hiring anthropologists and other social researchers to help them gain insight into user needs and desires with the ultimate aim of gaining greater market share and ensuring more predictable success with new product launches. Within design itself, the emergence of design ethnography, co-design, participatory design, and design probes — as well as other variously named design methods — further signals that designers are increasingly adopting the tools of social observation as resources for ‘local knowledge’ that better inform and inspire the development of new ideas.