香港六合彩

Module Content

Design anthropology is about how working with designers and the kinds of social understandings which can arise from that collaboration. The primary outputs of design anthropology work are social commentaries, rather than designs per se. The work involves thinking critically about the opportunities and problems which design presents when it forms an ever deeper part of everyday culture. Design anthropologists undertake a very 鈥榟uman鈥� work, negotiating the relationships which exist between ethnographic sites and design studios, laboratories, and institutions (corporations, public sector, or NGOs), more than the 鈥榯echnical鈥� work of producing designs.

You will explore how everyday material culture and consumption are increasingly understood as 鈥榙esigned鈥�, and as a set of intentional projects. 听You will study how anthropologists engage and collaborate with various design disciplines (eg. product, service, graphic, user experience, digital, fashion, architecture).

Postgraduate Design Anthropology

At Masters level, you will form teams of researchers of 4-6 people, each working with an external organisation or designer to produce micro-ethnographic studies and interpretations which can inform their design problems and issues, both by providing constructive data, and by cultural critique of their work.

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Indicative Topics听

• The problems of creativity.
• Forms of knowledge work.
• Interpretations of design culture.
• Design Contexts and Design Concepts
• Futuring.
• Values-based design.
• Post-human designing

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Learning Outcomes

By the end of the module, you should:

• Be able to undertake anthropological work in a group, creating conditions where new kinds of anthropological knowledge can emerge which might not emerge individually.
• Know how to produce and present ethnographic research data for a particular design issue.
• Be able to develop outputs which are suitable for dialogues about culture, not only individual: you will show you can help designers to 鈥渢hink with鈥� ethnography, not only 鈥渁bout鈥� ethnography.
• Know key critiques of the problems of design work and design politics.

Indicative Teaching Delivery

There will be two sessions per week. One session will comprise of a lecture and discussion of key publications, research and theorisations of design and design anthropological knowledge. The other session will be devoted to supporting the team practicals. Because team projects are due to be presented in the Summer, each team will have a 2-4 hour groupwork slot after Easter, to help prepare their project for presentation.

Because we pre-arrange the collaborators, usually four, the module will be capped at around 24 students so as to ensure each team is maximum 6. Each year, we pre-decide a theme (eg. in 2019-20 鈥楨nvironment鈥�), and approach four relevant different kinds of collaborator. At least one is a private company, at least one is public sector or heritage, and at least one is a charity or third sector, to cover different students鈥� interests.

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