Design Anthropology as Social Design Process

Abstract

As professionally trained designers position their practices as central to social change, they bring with them efficiency in process, technical expertise, sophisticated aesthetic skills, and highly scripted narratives. In economically challenged cities like Detroit, creative professionals are hired to help transform neighborhoods that are described as abandoned, disorderly, and “blighted”. Residents of these neighborhoods are increasingly asked to engage in stakeholder meetings and design charrettes that promise greater inclusion and “a voice” in the process. These activities and interventions are sometimes framed as Design Thinking, human-centered design, or participatory design. However, as designer-adapted, re-contextualized anthropological methods, these approaches may ultimately diminish the value and understanding of applied anthropological enquiry. The author argues that design anthropology can offer a deeper, more grounded, and more equitable approach to design and design research processes in contexts of “urban renewal.”

The Digital Turn in Business Anthropology

“…Business anthropology has broadly been defined as the application of anthropological theories and methods to the business context, with a historical focus on organizational culture, consumer research, marketing, advertising, and design (Jordan 2013(Jordan , 2019Ferraro and Briody 2017;Artz 2021;Morais and Malefyt 2010). Over the last decade, user experience (UX) has also emerged as an important area of interest within the discipline, leading to increased discussions on design anthropology in publications such as the Journal of Business Anthropology (JBA) (DiCarlo 2018;Forlano and Smith 2018;Gregory 2018;Miller and Hitch 2018). However, despite the growing relevance of digital technologies to business, digital anthropology has been notably underexplored by business anthropologists.…”

Netnography and design thinking: development and illustration in the vegan food industry

“…Design thinking has recently drawn on disciplines such as anthropology and sociology (Reyero, 2019; Gregory, 2018). Reyero (2019, np), considers that the ability of anthropologists “to visibilise the invisible, ask pertinent questions and define social problems” is a “perfect match” to the designer needs that “are dedicated to developing solutions to problems”.…”