Design has become mainstream thinking: Design Thinking. This may be defined as a method and set of values or behaviours as a human-oriented approach to solving problems.
Design Anthropology is a way to uncover social aspects of user experience and here, the ideas are oriented towards the world of digital transformation and innovation.
Why is Design Anthropology important for digital transformation and innovation?
Conceptually, Design Anthropologists are super-empathetic designers, who create solutions for both diverse and specific audiences. Socially, Anthropology applied means enabling more inclusivity, by better understanding differences in people and cultures.
Design Anthropology is both good business sense and great social responsibility: having a greater understanding of (and empathy with) different people and cultures.
Design Thinking, Digitally
From a digital innovation perspective, new technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine Learning represent new challenges, requiring a deeper Design Thinking. But we must avoid the naval-gazing, traditions of academic Anthropology: Design Anthropology must be pragmatic, inclusive and materially useful.
With IoT we are beginning to see everyday objects becoming 'connected' or 'smart' through enabling communications over the Internet: cars, clothing, food and drinks packaging, home appliances, ... and soon, robots ('bots') - the list goes on. This is where we, as consumers, are becoming open to a more intimate 'immersive' experience with producers.
This presents many questions about ethics, where social can become anti-social, where users must control consent, where privacy may be compromised, and so forth. When does 'immersive' become 'intrusive'?
Through Design Anthropology we can begin to understand how different people, living and working in different parts of the world, will react in different ways to digital transformations and innovations. What we are beginning to see with 'immersive' technologies is a need to better understand the behaviours and values unique to different people and cultures.
As Design Thinking becomes widely accepted as key to digital innovation, it has also attracted some criticism from authors, such as Jay Hasbrouck, who argue that as a method, Design Thinking is being relegated to an over-simplified business-as-usual process, resulting in a crushing of creativity and deeper thought. Hasbrouck specifically argues for something beyond 'rote' Design Thinking exercises to:
"... new ways to see how cultural worlds are organized and offers frameworks for thinking about how they’re formed, and how they evolve and interact."
We can see a combination of Ethnography and Anthropology entering a broader, more intense understanding of what Design Thinking is, or could be.
Ethnography may be defined as the scientific description of peoples and cultures with their customs, habits, and mutual differences.So, sometimes, Design Thinkers can also be Ethnographers too: but in the context of digital innovation, must be 'Ethnographers of the Possible' - looking forward, not backwards.
To simply explain the differences: Anthropology is a discipline - scientific discipline that focuses on the human species, its origins, its evolution, distribution, commonalities and diversity, organised and adapt over time and space, and Ethnography is a method - adopted to gather first hand information to document the lives, societies, and cultures of people encountered.
As a literal translation Ethnography in means writing (from Greek, graphien) about cultures (ethnos).
Interior designers and architects employ methods for researching built environments. As AI and IOT-based innovations move digital innovations into more 'immersive' physical and virtual environments, it becomes important to encourage the development of interdisciplinary teams and groups, when engaging in Design Thinking.
What does Anthropology bring to Design Thinking for digital transformation and innovation?
The Design Anthropologist focuses on four key things:
- Enables direct observations, in the field - not arm's length surveys.
- Emphasises human variability, relative to specific industries or use cases.
- Better understands the motivations of people making decisions.
- Focuses on empathy: not judging, but understanding.
In practice, this means Design Thinking going deeper: more observations, more incisive questions, and greater empathy. Anthropologists and Ethnographers should become part of the design team: social scientists adding value to a more sophisticated Design Thinking process.
For Design Anthropologists to be be at their most effective, they need users or other participating stakeholders in any digital innovation process to be responsive. So, from a psychographic profile perspective, what characterises the ideal early adopter, as digital innovator?
At a human level this can be measured by what psychologists call a Need For Cognition (NFC): a personality variable reflecting the extent to which individuals are inclined towards effortful cognitive activities.
Stakeholders who are inclined towards 'effortful cognitive activities' means people who like problem-solving, who embrace challenges - and who ask, and respond to insightful questions - all the hallmarks of a great Design Anthropologist too.
NFC is also related to openness and conscientiousness (Sadowski & Cogburn, 1997). This reflects both openness - a curiosity and tolerance of new ideas - and conscientiousness - a willingness to engage in effortful thought (Verplanken, Hazenberg & Palenewen, 1992).
The Design Anthropologist will emerge from new career paths for social science graduates who have studied Anthropology and Ethnography. From a business perspective, this means Design Thinking that delivers transformative outcomes and the reinvention of business-as-usual services and processes - delivered on state-of-the-art tech platforms.