The "Re-emergence" of Ethnography in Industrial Design Today (1999)
Paul D. Rothstein
IDSA
Assistant Professor
Arizona State University
Abstract
During the past decade, ethnographic research has increasingly become a vital part of industrial design. Many of today's design projects require designers to seek fresh ideas in the real world where people interact with products and systems The results have generally been noteworthy. Contemporary design literature includes numerous case studies illustrating how ethnographic research has sparked the discovery of innovative, useful and profitable product concepts.
This paper explores why ethnography has become such a "hot" topic in industrial design today. It looks at the origins of ethnography in design (found in the work of Henry Dreyfuss, Robert Probst and William Stumpf) and postulates that its "re-emergence" in the 1990s is attributable to four key factors:
Ethnography links designers to users.
Making this connection has become increasingly important in a global community where significant physical, cognitive and cultural distances separate designers from users.
Ethnography helps clients succeed in a competitive marketplace.
In a marketplace characterized by unpredictable consumer preferences, manufacturers and businesses need methods like ethnography to develop products that people genuinely value, need and want.
Ethnography supports growth in industrial design.
Product planning is becoming a key part of the service industrial design groups provide to clients and companies. As a part of this service, ethnographic methods are used to imagine and identify exciting new product ideas and business opportunities.
Ethnography enhances a designer's creativity.
Research into the nature of creativity (conducted by Jacob Getzels, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Mark Runco and others) has shown that "discovery-oriented" processes lead to qualitatively superior creative results.
