Trend Studies as a Practice between Design and Anthropology
Clarissa Martins Alves Lopes, Daniel Gonçalves Lopes · e-Revista LOGO · 2021
This inquiry highlights the trend studies as a practice between anthropology and design. The designer is not only a creator of artifacts, but also a culture maker and proponent of future experiences between people and the designed world. Thus, this article aims to demonstrate how Trend Studies relate to the analytical and generative practice of Design Anthropology in order to constitute views and conjectures about futures. Therefore, this paper describes the use of Design Anthropology practices to identify trends and to design futures experiences. We applied a Design-Based Research with participants to examine Trend Studies in design practice from an anthropological lens. The results suggest that trends produce and reproduce discourses and operate as a design product, i.e., trends operate formalizing the existing world and also designing ways to create alternative worlds