Michael Carbaugh

Response to:

“Ethnography and Critical Design Practice” by Tim Plowman. Appears in the book Design Research: Methods and Perspectives edited by Brenda Laurel, published by MIT Press.

Throughout this essay I felt that Tim Plowman had a very well-versed argument for incorporating ethnography in design for the sake of having design that acts as more aware of its audience. Hand in hand with user-centered design, it seems one of the dominant ideologies driving this integration is the possibility of products that function better for society. Plowman also does an excellent job of integrating ethnography in a practical sense and explaining how it is used in business to act as a better method of understanding audience.

In a contemporary sense, it seems ethnography is most frequently used as a method to delve into everyday life of the audience to best understand how something would be experienced. This methodology helps go beyond vague assumptions and analytically approach a situation as close to a user as someone can.

While Plowman’s argument was direct and convincing, and had little room for disagreement (the overall call to action is simply to inform how ethnography can help enhance the design process), what really interested me in extending the text was reading about social theorist Michel de Certeau. His work acknowledges men and women as “producers” of their own lifestyle to take objects post-production, modifying and contextualizing them to best fit their needs. Concisely, this is almost an acknowledgment of design within the parameters of original intent and production. Just because the designer created an original object doesn’t mean that the intent can transcend through the object itself. From this perspective, in a sense the designer loses authority over a singular idea but gains new possibilities through understanding the idea of “self-invention.”

When reading this article, I quickly responded to Certeau’s idea through the memory of a humorous piece Wired Magazine had done to consciously complicate the intent of having a print magazine in a contemporary context, especially about the subject matter it covers (the work can be found here). This example demonstrates not only understanding the possibility of a new “producer” obtaining the object, but also the ways that the materiality of the project can be utilized in a context that would be practical for a range of “producers.” As the context of different designed objects changes throughout time, “producers” will continuously change the meaning of objects for a variety of reasons, most likely being functional. Acknowledging this concept complicates the designer’s role in communicating, but also yields collaborative possibility the designer can’t even imagine.

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