What is design ethnography?
I get asked this question a lot. I explain what design ethnography is like this… Design ethnography is a form of design research. Design research is investigative research that is conducted for the purpose of influencing product, process and program design outcomes. It can be qualitative or quantitative, I specialize in qualitative research. My goals as a design researcher are to 1) discover design innovation opportunities and 2) improve the design of existing products and on-line applications by bringing awareness of user activities and values into design processes. Design ethnography is form of design research that is heavily influenced by educational and cultural anthropology. Ethnographers are social scientists. It’s our job to understand people, social interaction and the tools that are used to communicate and create such as language, objects of art and computer. You are probably familiar with the work of cultural anthropologists who travel to remote areas of the world to study
