Abstract
Design ethnography consists in iterative processes in which research, interventions, and design flow into one another, whereby design itself develops epistemological qualities. Design ethnography means moving rapidly between the various approaches and constantly adopting new perspectives. Methods should not be dogmatically adhered to, but can and should be adapted and transcended. Design ethnography is therefore a “dirty” practice that tends toward anarchy. It can become “clean” and intersubjectively accessible only by means of inner distancing, conscious reflection, and not least, language.
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Keywords
In design ethnography, research, intervention, and design are intertwined in iterative processes (Otto and Smith 2013, p. 11) and practice is reflected upon theoretically and methodologically. Reflection takes place when something is articulated in language, which is a form of translation. Because language generalizes, something gets lost in this translation—namely, the intrinsic and ineffable understanding of praxis. At the same time, something is gained—namely, reflection and the possibility of intersubjective connection.
To capture one’s own actions in language implies the kind of distancing that is typical of reflection. The practices and research methods of design ethnography are variable and diverse—and should be well-founded and consciously considered. Only in this way can design research become a discipline that has impact on other disciplines and enters into dialogue and exchange with them. Only through the articulation and explication of the process can methods be developed that can be applied, changed, expanded, transcended, and adapted. A method isn’t simply fixed and self-contained—rather, it is an ongoing process (Crabtree et al. 2012, p. 67; Salvador et al. 1999, p. 41). Due to the playful and iterative approaches inherent in design practice, design ethnography has a high potential for methodological innovation (Otto and Smith 2013, p. 11 ff.) that is also interesting and inspiring for cultural anthropology and sociology.
Reflecting on methods in the context of design ethnography thus means considering practice (Schön 1983), which changes the role of the ethnographer. While in cultural sociology and anthropology, the ethnographer leads a “strange double life” (Maeder 2008, p. 251) between active participation and internal distancing, designers alter what happens in the field through intervention. It is not just passive observation but also engaged action that leads to insight (Maturana and Varela 2003, p. 13). It may be concluded that these design techniques do not just objectivize previously generated knowledge, but “that designing must be seen as a cognitive process that produces knowledge” (Ammon and Froschauer 2013, p. 16). This implies that designers switch quickly and in response to the situation between roles and perspectives. They switch between giving form and doing research, between active intervention and passive observation. They transfer findings into hypotheses and materializations, such as prototypes. The potential of design ethnography, which is not (nor can it be) a self-contained method, consists in rapid transfers of images into words and of words into designs, the application of which is in turn reflected upon and articulated. It consists in quick and situational changes between thinking styles and perspectives, in a restless search for cosmologies of reality and the interventions that alter them.
References
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Müller, F. (2021). Epilogue. In: Design Ethnography. SpringerBriefs in Anthropology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60396-0_8
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