Norm,
Spot on! The Mead 'joke' should be widely shared.

Also, I agree with your closing remarks:
> The study of culture, material culture and design and are relational
> practices in my understanding ... if we are to study in these areas we
> must adopt situated and context relevant understandings. Indeed I  
> would
> say that this adoption is the problem of our times ... some  
> progress may
> be made investigating epistemic links between design and anthropology.

But there is a need to spell this out in much more detail. There are  
at least two sides to the issue and some practical matters. The two  
sides relate to the purpose of the work and who owns the  
descriptions. In so far that anthropological investigation is allied  
to any kind of problem solving, it's important always to ask whose  
problem is being solved, or whose description of the problem is being  
used, and who owns the data and the outcome.

On one side, most of the uses of anthropological investigation  
methods in design practice are by commercial organisations in search  
of profits. 'Understanding' people is simply a means to development  
of products that these same people will be expected to buy in the  
future. The people involved by the investigators do not get any  
shares in the products they have helped create. They have no  
ownership in the raw data, the descriptions that follow, or the  
outcome. This type of approach is business as usual, even if it  
describes itself as 'collaborative'. Though some work of the  
commercial type has the potential to shift some of the power and  
economic relationships.

The other side of this—leaning towards the Byker Wall end of the  
spectrum—is more genuinely one in which ownership of the raw data,  
the descriptions that follow and the outcomes are shared. But these  
would be the minority of design projects.

At time it's difficult to know whether something is guided by a  
concern for people or a concern for profits. Sometimes it could be  
both, but we need to be clearer on these issues.

There are also some practical matters. Designers are interested in  
using data and descriptions to make decisions, and they want to do so  
in the most efficient and effective way. To that end, not all types  
of anthropological data collection are equally efficient or  
effective. As design researchers we have to ask which methods are  
most suited to our purposes, and what evidence we have to suggest  
that one technique is better than another.

Often, however, fashionable enthusiasm becomes a substitute. As an  
example, in some fields of design there is much fashionable  
enthusiasm these days for personas. There is, however, no systematic  
data on the effectiveness or efficiency of personas as compared with  
other people 'understanding' methods. Nor is it easy to separate out  
the practical and political uses of personas in organisations.  
Fashions in methods, like fashions in ideas, do not depend on careful  
research or analysis. They depend on a much simpler form of knowing.  
As the Bellman and Lewis Carroll's Hunting of the Snark put it:
"What I tell you three times is true"

So far, I have asserted twice that design has become part of the  
fashion industry. One more time and it's true!

David
-- 
blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog
web: http://www.communication.org.au

Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
CEO • Communication Research Institute •
• helping people communicate with people •

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