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IT Product Design, Mads Clausen Institute
University of Southern Denmark, Sønderborg
jmoore@xinsight.ca
INTRODUCTION
In February 2003, I ran a workshop for product development engineers at Novo Nordisk. The purpose of the workshop was to view video that I had taken of people with diabetes as they went about their daily lives, and then use this video as a starting point for discussing new design ideas. After the workshop I interviewed some of the participants about their experiences using the video. The participants I spoke with were enthusiastic about getting a chance to see people in their own environment, but even within this positive feedback there were some comments that revealed a fundamental criticism towards using ethnographic-styled research and an anthropological-inspired approach in the product design process. The first quote arose out of a discussion about one how one of the diabetics in the video used various boxes for organizing his tools and supplies for treating diabetes.
The Anthropological Approach
First, it is important to provide some background on Anthropology. What is the anthropological approach? What "cultural anthropologists do is ethnography" (Geertz 1993:5), which is "[t]he process of recording and interpreting another people's way of life..." (Keesing 1981:5). They do this by going out into the field to immerse themselves in the world of the of the people that they wish to study. But their study has a different approach than other scientific methods. "There is no longer any place of overview (mountaintop) from which to map human ways of life, no Archimedian point from which to represent the world. Mountains are in constant motion." (Clifford 1991:616). Anthropologists recognize their own role in the process of understanding and so their research makes no claims to objectivity, but is in fact, deeply subjective.
This explicit rejection of objectivity, opens up anthropology to a serious criticism: Why is it important to study people and cultures if all that can be learned is relative truths? One response is to defend subjectivity by attacking objectivity. To use the tools of objectivity to try to understand culture, is to miss the point entirely. As Ryle illustrates (Geertz 1991) , if you only observed phenomenon you would never be able to tell the difference between a twitch of the eye muscle and a wink. Both have identical appearances, but there is a world of meaning behind a wink that is absent behind a twitch. Pfaffenberger also challenges the utility of the objective approach. "Virtually none of the technologies that structure our current social landscape were produced by the application of science; on the contrary, science and organized objective knowledge are more commonly the result of technology." (Pfaffenberger 1992:512)
It is also interesting to examine our desire to create generalizations: What is their value and purpose? A generalization is inherently a simplification. If every time I see a hammer hitting a bell, I hear the bell ring, I will soon associate those two events as one. As Hume points out, if I observed this enough times in "constant conjunction" (Hume 2000:43) I might eventually say, the hammer hitting the bell caused the bell to ring, although there is no way to prove this relationship. The law of cause and effect is a cognitive tool that is learned from experience. It is a generalization that helps us to simplify, which in turn helps us explain, understand as well as predict phenomenon. The fact that generalizations are a simplification is also the source of their greatest weakness as any simplification can become an oversimplification in the wrong context. If the hammer strikes the bell and no sound is made (for example they are both in a vacuum) then the simple rule of the hammer striking the bell and causing the bell to ring suddenly appears to be wrong (at least until the rule is modified to handle this new case).
If I know that all diabetics worry that they cannot control their blood sugar levels, and I build a product that alleviates this fear, then my imaginary product will be a success. The problem is the real world presents an infinite number of conditions and exceptions that are not part of my generalization. My generalization is useful if all of my excluded details are irrelevant.
But, attacks on generalization and objectivity do not support a subjective approach, but only further strengthen the criticism that anthropologists are not working towards a higher goal, but are relativists who see all ideas and interpretations as equally valid. This is untrue as anthropologists clearly identify some interpretations as better than others, it is just that the anthropologist doesn't promise to find any universal truths. "Cultural analysis is (or should be) guessing at meanings, assessing the guesses, and drawing explanatory conclusions from the better guesses, not discovering the Continent of Meaning and mapping out its bodiless landscape." (Geertz 1993:20) But, the anthropologist is still dealing with local truths which can have wider applicability. Geertz writes, "small facts speak to large issues" (Geertz 1993:23) so the anthropologist's goal is "...not to generalize across cases but to generalize within them." (Geertz 1993:26)
The Question of Utility
With this more realistic defining of anthropology's goals, there is still the qu estion of utility: How can anthropological interpretations of culture inform the design process? The key to using an anthropological approach is to accept and e mbrace its subjective and local (as opposed to universal) nature. Failure to do this, doesn't make anthropology speak in universal truths, but delegitimizes it completely. "If anthropological interpretation is constructing a reading of what happens, then to divorce it from what happens... from the whole vast business o f the world - is to divorce it from its applications and render it vacant."(Geer tz 1993:18) This can unfortunately be seen in a recent study for Intel, where re searchers spent 16 weeks in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy where they visited 45 households in an attempt to understand Western Europe (Bell 2001). This lack of focus on any specific locality, not suprising resulted in rather crude stereotypes and bland generalizations of life in all of these countries. For example: "There appears to be a stronger sense of the need to balance work and home life - people were not working 60 hours a week (in fact that is illegal in a number of EU countries) and spending time with family, actively engaging with them, was viewed as a priority." (Bell 2001:5) There are few stories and details to back up generalizations, and as a result the study lacks authenticity. (You could easily imagine that the researchers never left their desks.) In a sense, it manages to be equally unconvincing whether it is seen as general market research or as a specific, detailed anthropological study. In contrast, by focusing on the specific details of a culture, and embracing the differences and oddities that don't fit into overly large generalizations, these details can become key elements in the stories that anthropologists tell. In a study of Apache Native American's living habits, Esber found that Apaches living in a typical Anglo house design preferred to not physically crowd together into one room, although they would still carry on a conversation between rooms as if everyone were in the same room (Esber 1987). This insight eventually led to building houses with more open space in order to better support the socialization style of the Apaches, and the adoption rate of the homes was higher than in similar housing projects. The process here is important: by focusing on specific local details, larger generalizations can be made, but the generalizations never lose sight of their original grounding. If anyone was to ask why open spaces are important, the design decision can be traced back to the vivid image of two people talking to each other while sitting in different rooms. Anthropology provides a foundation in reality upon which design moves can be made.
CONCLUSION
What anthropology offers is an interpretation of a culture, which can be a foundation for a design discussion. But, it is important to look at the nature of this foundation. As stated above, there is no single correct answer, so interpretation and developing meaning is more of an ongoing process than a static piece of knowledge. "To say that the meanings are ‘in my head'... may be neurologically correct, but it misses many or distorts the way meanings are created between us, as a social process." (Keesing 1981:73) As meanings are a process they can be built up and developed over time, across individuals and ever between designers. It is in the idea of interpretation as a process that we can respond to the original dilemma of how to create a general design through specific, local details. If we understand why someone likes to organize their diabetic supplies in boxes, we learn about the individual but we also start to identity larger themes (such as: Control, Structure, Ritual, etc.) We can then test these themes and pattern against other events from the field, which leads to a further development and refinement of the interpretation. It is this way that anthropology provides an approach to move from the specific to the general, but the challenge remains to facilitate this respect for individual, specific events with the other members of the design team.
REFERENCES
Bell, Genevieve
Esber, George S. Jr
Geertz, Clifford
Hume, David
Keesing, Roger M
Pfaffenberger, Bryan
Schiffer, Michael Brian
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March 2003
Moving from the Specific to the General
A response to skepticism towards the anthropological approach in the design process
Jason MooreIT Product Design, Mads Clausen Institute
University of Southern Denmark, Sønderborg
jmoore@xinsight.ca
ABSTRACT
During a design workshop that used ethnographic-inspired material, I encountered deep skepticism towards the anthropological approach from some of the participants: How can anthropology help the design process if it focuses on specific details and not universal truths? Anthropology is rooted in subjectivity, but the strength lies not in challenging objective claims of other systems or pretending to be objective, but in embracing its subjectivity. Anthropology is a process or interpretation which allows for more general understandings to be generated from individual instances. The power of the anthropological generalizations is that they remain rooted in specific, individual stories.
Keywords
Anthropology, ethnography, interpretation, subjectivity, objectivity, design process
During a design workshop that used ethnographic-inspired material, I encountered deep skepticism towards the anthropological approach from some of the participants: How can anthropology help the design process if it focuses on specific details and not universal truths? Anthropology is rooted in subjectivity, but the strength lies not in challenging objective claims of other systems or pretending to be objective, but in embracing its subjectivity. Anthropology is a process or interpretation which allows for more general understandings to be generated from individual instances. The power of the anthropological generalizations is that they remain rooted in specific, individual stories.
Keywords
Anthropology, ethnography, interpretation, subjectivity, objectivity, design process
INTRODUCTION
In February 2003, I ran a workshop for product development engineers at Novo Nordisk. The purpose of the workshop was to view video that I had taken of people with diabetes as they went about their daily lives, and then use this video as a starting point for discussing new design ideas. After the workshop I interviewed some of the participants about their experiences using the video. The participants I spoke with were enthusiastic about getting a chance to see people in their own environment, but even within this positive feedback there were some comments that revealed a fundamental criticism towards using ethnographic-styled research and an anthropological-inspired approach in the product design process. The first quote arose out of a discussion about one how one of the diabetics in the video used various boxes for organizing his tools and supplies for treating diabetes.
I guess you could put something together that would fit his way of doing it. It would have to be something very special. But, that's actually the thought... My point of watching just one person is that you focus on things like this... whereas, I mean, everybody's got things like this. [Jens1 ]The second quote is from another workshop participant that arose while discussing how he was watching the video.
I'm looking for needs not personalities. Every personality should be able to use our devices. [Per]The first comment is a criticism of the local nature of the anthropological approach: How can we learn about anything universal by only studying one person? The second comment reflects the same criticism, but also reveals a strategy for working around that problem: We can't design for individual people since every person is different, but people have similar needs, and we can design for these more universal needs. In this paper I would like to examine this criticism that anthropology cannot move from the specific to the general, for this move of translating local insights into a more general design is a key issue if anthropological approaches are to have relevance in the design process.
The Anthropological Approach
First, it is important to provide some background on Anthropology. What is the anthropological approach? What "cultural anthropologists do is ethnography" (Geertz 1993:5), which is "[t]he process of recording and interpreting another people's way of life..." (Keesing 1981:5). They do this by going out into the field to immerse themselves in the world of the of the people that they wish to study. But their study has a different approach than other scientific methods. "There is no longer any place of overview (mountaintop) from which to map human ways of life, no Archimedian point from which to represent the world. Mountains are in constant motion." (Clifford 1991:616). Anthropologists recognize their own role in the process of understanding and so their research makes no claims to objectivity, but is in fact, deeply subjective.
This explicit rejection of objectivity, opens up anthropology to a serious criticism: Why is it important to study people and cultures if all that can be learned is relative truths? One response is to defend subjectivity by attacking objectivity. To use the tools of objectivity to try to understand culture, is to miss the point entirely. As Ryle illustrates (Geertz 1991) , if you only observed phenomenon you would never be able to tell the difference between a twitch of the eye muscle and a wink. Both have identical appearances, but there is a world of meaning behind a wink that is absent behind a twitch. Pfaffenberger also challenges the utility of the objective approach. "Virtually none of the technologies that structure our current social landscape were produced by the application of science; on the contrary, science and organized objective knowledge are more commonly the result of technology." (Pfaffenberger 1992:512)
It is also interesting to examine our desire to create generalizations: What is their value and purpose? A generalization is inherently a simplification. If every time I see a hammer hitting a bell, I hear the bell ring, I will soon associate those two events as one. As Hume points out, if I observed this enough times in "constant conjunction" (Hume 2000:43) I might eventually say, the hammer hitting the bell caused the bell to ring, although there is no way to prove this relationship. The law of cause and effect is a cognitive tool that is learned from experience. It is a generalization that helps us to simplify, which in turn helps us explain, understand as well as predict phenomenon. The fact that generalizations are a simplification is also the source of their greatest weakness as any simplification can become an oversimplification in the wrong context. If the hammer strikes the bell and no sound is made (for example they are both in a vacuum) then the simple rule of the hammer striking the bell and causing the bell to ring suddenly appears to be wrong (at least until the rule is modified to handle this new case).
If I know that all diabetics worry that they cannot control their blood sugar levels, and I build a product that alleviates this fear, then my imaginary product will be a success. The problem is the real world presents an infinite number of conditions and exceptions that are not part of my generalization. My generalization is useful if all of my excluded details are irrelevant.
But, attacks on generalization and objectivity do not support a subjective approach, but only further strengthen the criticism that anthropologists are not working towards a higher goal, but are relativists who see all ideas and interpretations as equally valid. This is untrue as anthropologists clearly identify some interpretations as better than others, it is just that the anthropologist doesn't promise to find any universal truths. "Cultural analysis is (or should be) guessing at meanings, assessing the guesses, and drawing explanatory conclusions from the better guesses, not discovering the Continent of Meaning and mapping out its bodiless landscape." (Geertz 1993:20) But, the anthropologist is still dealing with local truths which can have wider applicability. Geertz writes, "small facts speak to large issues" (Geertz 1993:23) so the anthropologist's goal is "...not to generalize across cases but to generalize within them." (Geertz 1993:26)
The Question of Utility
With this more realistic defining of anthropology's goals, there is still the qu estion of utility: How can anthropological interpretations of culture inform the design process? The key to using an anthropological approach is to accept and e mbrace its subjective and local (as opposed to universal) nature. Failure to do this, doesn't make anthropology speak in universal truths, but delegitimizes it completely. "If anthropological interpretation is constructing a reading of what happens, then to divorce it from what happens... from the whole vast business o f the world - is to divorce it from its applications and render it vacant."(Geer tz 1993:18) This can unfortunately be seen in a recent study for Intel, where re searchers spent 16 weeks in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy where they visited 45 households in an attempt to understand Western Europe (Bell 2001). This lack of focus on any specific locality, not suprising resulted in rather crude stereotypes and bland generalizations of life in all of these countries. For example: "There appears to be a stronger sense of the need to balance work and home life - people were not working 60 hours a week (in fact that is illegal in a number of EU countries) and spending time with family, actively engaging with them, was viewed as a priority." (Bell 2001:5) There are few stories and details to back up generalizations, and as a result the study lacks authenticity. (You could easily imagine that the researchers never left their desks.) In a sense, it manages to be equally unconvincing whether it is seen as general market research or as a specific, detailed anthropological study. In contrast, by focusing on the specific details of a culture, and embracing the differences and oddities that don't fit into overly large generalizations, these details can become key elements in the stories that anthropologists tell. In a study of Apache Native American's living habits, Esber found that Apaches living in a typical Anglo house design preferred to not physically crowd together into one room, although they would still carry on a conversation between rooms as if everyone were in the same room (Esber 1987). This insight eventually led to building houses with more open space in order to better support the socialization style of the Apaches, and the adoption rate of the homes was higher than in similar housing projects. The process here is important: by focusing on specific local details, larger generalizations can be made, but the generalizations never lose sight of their original grounding. If anyone was to ask why open spaces are important, the design decision can be traced back to the vivid image of two people talking to each other while sitting in different rooms. Anthropology provides a foundation in reality upon which design moves can be made.
CONCLUSION
What anthropology offers is an interpretation of a culture, which can be a foundation for a design discussion. But, it is important to look at the nature of this foundation. As stated above, there is no single correct answer, so interpretation and developing meaning is more of an ongoing process than a static piece of knowledge. "To say that the meanings are ‘in my head'... may be neurologically correct, but it misses many or distorts the way meanings are created between us, as a social process." (Keesing 1981:73) As meanings are a process they can be built up and developed over time, across individuals and ever between designers. It is in the idea of interpretation as a process that we can respond to the original dilemma of how to create a general design through specific, local details. If we understand why someone likes to organize their diabetic supplies in boxes, we learn about the individual but we also start to identity larger themes (such as: Control, Structure, Ritual, etc.) We can then test these themes and pattern against other events from the field, which leads to a further development and refinement of the interpretation. It is this way that anthropology provides an approach to move from the specific to the general, but the challenge remains to facilitate this respect for individual, specific events with the other members of the design team.
REFERENCES
Bell, Genevieve
2001. Looking Across the Atlantic: Using Ethnographic Methods to Make Sense of Europe. Intel Technology Journal Q3. Electronic Document,
http://www.intel.com/technology/itj/q32001/pdf/art_1.pdf , accessed February 23, 2003.
Esber, George S. Jr
1987 Designing Apache Homes with Apaches. In Anthropological Praxis: Translating Knowledge into Action. Robert M. Wulff and Shirley J. Fiske, eds. Pp. 187-196. London: Westview Press.
Geertz, Clifford
1993 [1973] The Interpretation of Cultures. London: Fountain Press.
Hume, David
2000 [1777] An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Electronic Document.
http://www.etext.leeds.ac.uk/hume/ehu/ehupbsb.htm , accessed February 23, 2003
Keesing, Roger M
1981 Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective. London: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.
Pfaffenberger, Bryan
1992 Social Anthropology of Technology, Annual Review of Anthropology 21:491-516.
Schiffer, Michael Brian
2001 Toward an Anthropology of Technology. In Anthropological Perspectives on Technology. Michael Brian Schiffer, ed. Pp. 1-16. Albuquerque: New Mexico Press.
1 Aliases have been used instead of the participant's real names.
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