The Blind Spot

In our everyday world, we operate within a reality that we experience as “normal,” and which we do not question further, although it is actually man-made and designed. In design ethnography, however, we need to define this reality not simply as given, but as constructed and contingent. We need to make blind spots visible and decompose the reality that we classify on the basis of received knowledge in a phenomenological way, which is epistemologically relevant. We must deliberately alienate ourselves from the familiar in order to seek new connections of meaning in it.

The Everyday World and Intersubjectivity

We have learned through processes of socialization how to name and identify things, which helps us continually reduce complexity and bring order to the contingent world around us in our everyday life. At the same time, we move within many “small” social lifeworlds, or “multiple realities,” that are disconnected from one another and each have a particular cultural grammar in which “things” are loaded with quite a variety of meanings that impact and alter our identities. Design ethnographers also move within these small social lifeworlds. They should neither judge these morally nor overwrite them with their own values, but rather meet them with openness and sensitivity.

Analysis

Drawing on sociological Grounded Theory and ethnographic semantics, this chapter argues that analysis is a genuinely creative practice. Analysis entails not simply classifying the data found or produced in the field in accordance with everyday, common-sense knowledge but rather looking for aesthetic and semantic clues in it. It is also not a fixed program, but rather a hermeneutic and explorative search for new connections and patterns of meaning. This is demonstrated through examples of various data materials, such as transcripts of interviews, observation protocols, photographs, video, and material culture.

Introduction: Design as a Discipline of Alternation

Design is never creating out of nothing—it always has specific cultural points of reference. Design alters and adapts, whereby the discipline always takes what exists as a reference point, which also makes it heretical. Design requires and generates knowledge, because designers always need to engage with specific lifeworlds. Through methods such as ethnography, this knowledge can be made explicit, which makes the discipline of design capable of connecting with other academic disciplines. Ethnography in the context of design differs from ethnography in the social sciences: it is quicker and embedded in the iterative processes that designing involves.

Design Research: Immersion and Intervention

Research is part of any design praxis. But there is no consensus about how exactly research should be conducted. This is in part due to the fact that the disciplines of design have varied historically and are today greatly differentiated from one another. This chapter sketches out how design ethnography does research: it does not test previously constructed hypotheses, but rather explores and leads into new territories, which makes it risky and adventurous. It concerns itself with singularities, which means it does not necessarily need to generalize its findings. It can break with convention, push boundaries, and expand conceptual horizons. It is abductive, constructivist, and reflexive. It develops hypotheses that can be transferred into design.

Representation and Reporting

Design needs language and text so that it can be negotiated intersubjectively and become capable of connection to other academic disciplines. Texts, however, do not objectively reflect realities but rather bring them forth through their own medium: academic, journalistic, essayistic, and literary texts afford very particular ways of viewing the world. Scientific truths are produced narratively as well—at least from the constructivist perspective. This is particularly the case for the texts of design ethnography, in which a story-telling quality is inherent and which may take on subjectivist perspectives. These aspects of design ethnography must be consciously reflected in the process.

Epilogue

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.

Methods and Aspects of Field Research

This chapter lays out the history of ethnography, which began with travel narratives in antiquity and came to be used as a method in anthropology and urban sociology in the early twentieth century. Discussed, among other things, are the researcher’s role in the field and ethical considerations, as well as methods such as observation, interviews, digital, visual, and participatory ethnography, and the question of the documentation of design ethnography research. These are dealt with here within the specific context of design ethnography, which is usually significantly shorter in duration than the typical ethnographies in anthropology and cultural sociology and may seek not only to investigate a situation but also potentially to alter it.