Ethnography and design, understanding everyday user-product relationships
Clare Ruth Green · DS 76: Proceedings of E&PDE 2013, the 15th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education, Dublin, Ireland, 05-06.09.2013 · 2013
The range of methods used in Human Centred Design for understanding behaviour is wide and not yet stabilised, which may explain divergent levels of integration in design teaching. The speed at which design disciplines are changing means that the palette of possible user research tools is also evolving, making an overview difficult. This article questions which user-research methods should be considered essential in design studies at university level. We explore lasting everyday user-product relationships as a possible test case relevant to evolutions in user research towards understanding the detail of product related emotions and experience. As well as creating a focus for method choice, we discuss why studying lasting subject-object relationships may be particularly relevant for designers. We assess and discuss some current design research tools appropriate for understanding the detail of user experience, usable by designers rather than human science specialists.