Self Constructed Representations: Design Research in Participatory Situations

This paper proposes that the blurred line between designer and researcher can have a positive effect on design processes. The aims of the paper are firstly, to show how design ethnography is an emerging field of design practice in its own right, and secondly, to give some examples of how open ethnographic methods have been used in public-facing field research. Finally, to propose some recommendations related to the design of open design-ethnographic instruments and activities.

Design ethnography integrates two distinct understandings of ethnography. The first is observational, designers present people with designed objects and observe how they interact with them (Houde and Hill, 1997). The second is shaping, designers give participants unfinished prototypes or sketches and invite participants to modify them (Baskinger, 2010). Designerly ethnography involves methods more familiar to designers than to ethnographers, and may be directed towards more general categories of inquiry than product development. This idea draws on Ingold’s (2013) concept of correspondence with materials as a way of awakening the senses to experience.