Ethnography for Designers

Galen Cranz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317309512
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Ethnography for Designers teaches architects and designers how to listen actively to the knowledge people have about their own culture. This approach gives structure to values and qualities. It does this by noting the terms and underlying structure of thought people use to describe aspects of their culture. By responding to underlying cognitive patterns, the architect can both respond to the user and interpret creatively. Thus, ethno-semantic methods can help designers to enhance their professional responsibility to users and, at the same time, to feel fulfilled creatively. This book is a practical guide for those teaching social factors and social research methods to designers and for those using these methods in practice.

Part 1
The ethnographic design project

1 Introduction to design ethnography

1.1 The responsibility of the designer

The built environment affects people. People look at, drive by, walk through, and clean buildings. They rest, work, study, meet others, learn, and buy things in them. They take away ideas about proper ways to do those things from the cues architects use in buildings and landscapes. These cues tell us where and how to move: sit over here; never run in church; jump and run in the gym. How do we know these things? By the shape of and relationship between spaces, not just by words, letters, or diagrams.¹ Not only do buildings influence behavior, but also they carry symbolic meanings. For example, columns can signal that a place is stately. Other cues signal glamour or hominess. People spend most of their lives in buildings, so architects, developers, and builders have a special opportunity to think carefully about how their work will influence people’s behaviors now and in the future. This book offers a way to help design professionals create buildings that respond to people’s practical needs and wants and that are artistic, creative, and delightful as well. Additionally, it helps social scientists understand the social significance of buildings.

Buildings, spaces, and objects should be designed and evaluated based on a deep understanding of cultural practice. Cultural practice is defined as the information and ideas people use to guide their everyday behavior. Designers’ understanding of how people use and conceive of their physical environment will help them design environments that resonate with cultural practices. In the words of one architecture student, “[T]he role of the designer is not to interpret what he himself deems important and exciting into physical sculptures, but rather, listen to the world view of the users . .. and to translate . .. the needs and passions of the users into physical solutions.”² Some of the most famous designers have incorporated information about users into their designs: Frank Lloyd Wright and Alvar Aalto relied on a close observation of the symbolic life and movements of people for whom they imagined their designs, and Richard Neutra used questionnaires that detailed users’ perspectives.

Ethnosemantic methods allow designers to fulfill their professional responsibility to users and, at the same time, to feel fulfilled creatively. The ultimate purpose of design ethnography is to inspire designers to respond to users, and the immediate goal of this workbook is two-fold: first to alert practitioners to the need for a new kind of architectural (and other kinds of environmental) programming, based in part on users’ assessments of their prior experience with buildings, and then to guide beginners in undertaking an ethnographic research project to enable them to develop skills in collecting and responding to user data.

Box 1.1: Ethnography and New Models for Architectural Criticism and Practice

In a recent article, Nancy Levinson, Editor of Places, problematizes the role of the architectural critic, which she notes increasingly has taken on an art-critique model and, in so doing, has led to significant implications for the architecture profession—as well as its clients (those of us who occupy buildings). This model “tends to view works of architecture almost entirely as objects and hardly at all as environments” and in so doing preferences formal qualities over experience and aesthetics over function. In short, architectural criticism often is about “how a building looks more than how it works.”

Levinson continues by noting that a further limitation of this art-critique model is its investment in—and perpetuation of—what she terms the “boring star system” in which “critical validation leads to major commissions which in turn lead to more critical validation . .. creating an ever-constricting favored circle.” This self-perpetuating, closed circle is all the more problematic given the limited voices and points of view it allows within its reach.

Finally, the object-focused, star-driven facets of the architectural profession have created “the global critic, the critic with the world beat” who flies from country to country, “wherever the newest icon or star is being born.”

Though we want our critics to be well-traveled—after all, Levinson notes, seeing other places helps us understand those we live in all the better—we must ask “how . .. a critic [can] attain deep experience and comprehensive knowledge in a global field” including the connections to place, culture, and experience that are so essential for not only good architecture but good criticism as well.

Ultimately, Levinson concludes by suggesting that critics could develop specialty points of view from which to assess buildings. Our specialty, the experience of those who use buildings—as individuals, groups, institutions, and cultures—does take time; yet our careful work deserves a broad audience, not only among academic and professional circles, but for the general public as well, the people—sometimes called the nonpaying clients—who experience the building either as an occupant, a passer-by, or a neighbor.

Doing so can bring more—and diverse—view points into architectural discourse, reinforce the value of experience and culture in design, and change the profession of criticism and the practice of architecture.

Source: Nancy Levinson. “Critical Beats.” Places (March 6, 2010). http://places.designobserver.com/feature/critical-beats/12948/.

1.2 Introduction to semantic ethnography

In this endeavor, we borrow from ethnography, a research method used in cultural anthropology and sometimes in sociology, education, and business. Ethnography’s main objective is the description of culture. Literally, ethnography means describing (graphing) people (ethno).³ In general, ethnographers have been concerned with understanding how societies or cultural groups live, communicate, and conceive of the world. The main goal of ethnographic research is to be able to describe the culture of societies or cultural groups as an interrelated system of meanings from the point of view of those living in it; in other words, to articulate their implicit theory (rather than bring a formal theory to a social situation).

Though researchers and designers can utilize any number of methods to gain information about users—introspection, observation, surveys, interviews, census data, and participant observation—we see a variation of ethnography called semantic ethnography as most helpful for the jargon-filled world of design because it emphasizes meaning.⁴ Based on verbal descriptions obtained through interviews, semantic ethnographic research puts the focus on a group’s learned knowledge and how that group uses this knowledge to influence behavior. Semantic ethnography emphasizes how members inside the group experience culture. In addition to describing what a person is doing, semantic ethnography also asks why a person is doing something, and then what that action means in the group’s larger system of meanings. As researcher, programmer, and designer you get to learn how the culture makes meaning for itself; this is the insider’s point of view.

Over time with study you come to see a group as an insider sees it; thus, ethnographic research allows you to enter the world of an unfamiliar group. If, along the way, you become part of the scene you are studying, where you begin to see things as an insider yourself, then you have become what anthropologists call a participant observer. This term reflects a tradition within anthropology. Ethnographers—think of Margaret Mead, for example—spend months, even years “in the field” observing the behavior of the members of a culture, joining in daily routines, listening to stories and conversation, and recording their own interpretations. Because the participant observation method is so time-consuming, we have developed a method for using ethnographic principles in design that is more time-efficient, better adapted to the constraints of contemporary design practice, and focused on the social intentions built into the physical environment.

This book provides a distinctive version of ethnography for design students and practicing professionals to learn about people and their relationship to the built environment. Both students and seasoned professionals can use these skills. The skills you develop in ethnographic research are simple and useful in many situations ranging from redesigning an existing home to creating an entirely new setting for a corporate client. Ethnography can uncover both physical and conceptual problems within existing building conditions. We do not use checklists or surveys to anticipate “occupant satisfaction” or “user needs,” because these methods do not fit well with the creative process: these are better used after a building has been built. We see ethnography as a key part of the creative process of design because it can happen at the same time as a designer develops a concept from initial idea to actual place.⁵

1.3 Ethnography in the design of places: programming and evaluation

The primary applications of ethnography to planning and design are programming and evaluation. Programming begins at the initial stages of a project when the designers are determining the purpose of the building. Sanjoy Mazumdar notes that architectural programming arose in the 1960s in response to a “user needs gap,” the disconnection between the needs of a paying client and the final users. He defines programming as: “A set of activities introduced into the design process [including] the description of the needs [and] wants of the occupants through the systematic and comprehensive collection and analyses of data [and] the specification of goals, objectives, and performance criteria.”⁶

Mazumdar continues that the goals of programming include the development of “goal-oriented architecture” in which evidence—in other words, the data collected about users—forms the basis of design. In this way, programming is informed by a robust collection of data about user activities, needs, and interests, and ethnographic methods have been recognized by a number of fields beyond and including architecture as instrumental to that end.

A program can be explicit—as is the case with most commercial projects, which call for specific sizes and arrangements of interior spaces. For example, a hospital may require a certain number of treatment and examination rooms along with many other requirements. Other times, a program is implicit—as is the case with a contract for a house or a park.⁷ In these cases, the overall purpose is known when the client comes to the architect, but further definition is required. Sometimes, the purpose of the project itself is challenged or slightly modified, or, upon closer examination, unconscious agendas and higher visions are revealed. Mazumdar notes the importance of using cultural research to understand a group’s values and preferences, how they see themselves, and any social issues, divisions, or boundaries therein.⁸ Thus, your study might reveal conflicts and even go on to help resolve different conceptions of what the project could be and whom it should serve.

Design solutions are sometimes fixed prematurely and using this method might help dislodge that tendency. If you appreciate the importance of research in the programming phase of the research-and-design cycle you might be able to suspend design activity until you have as much information as possible. Or, at least you might redesign fr...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• PART 1 The ethnographic design project
• 2 The ethnographic design project
• 3 Sited micro–cultures
• 4 Cultural informants
• 5 Finding meaning in taxonomies
• 6 Literature review: what do others say?
• 7 Translating into physical design
• PART 2 Report-writing and sample reports
• 10 Sample ethnographic reports
• Glossary key of terms
• Bibliography
• Index