What is design anthropology?

Dori Tunstall has written a fantastic post that details how a simple card sort can become a deeper exercise in analysis. Dr. Tunstall is a PhD anthropologist and the University of Illinois at Chicago. She explains how anthropology takes design research to a deeper level in card sorting, a common technique for information architecture:

“In addition to the information architecture, I delivered statements about the continued meaning of gender classifications. In the course of conducting the card sort, I learned that men and women continued to classify domestic products based on stereotypical gendered spaces of male equals outside/garage, and female equals inside.”

Dr. Tunstall clearly lays out some of the deeper implications of design anthropology later in the post. This is a must read for anyone looking to deepen their design or research practice.

Why music on mobile phones is not music

The music industry is in a pickle. CD sales are falling, big-name artists are signing with touring companies. Independent artists are having a go on their own. The solution, the industry thinks, is to sell its music through mobile phones.

They are dead wrong. Here’s why.

Mobile phone users don’t use music in the same way that music listeners do. Music listeners — whether at home or on the go with their iPod — are listening to what the artist has created. Even “digital” forms of the music are still relatively analogue because the listener cannot slice and dice the music into a new mashup. The best she can do is skip a track (which she has done since the times of vinyl).

Music on mobile phones has both “listening” and impression management behaviors. Mobile phone users use music more often to present a version of themselves to the public world than they do to actually “listen.”

Music on mobile phones has truly become what Nicholas Negroponte calls “co-mingling bits.” Mobile phone operators have already sliced and diced the music into snippets for its users to use in various ways. The ringtone is one version. The “ringback,” which a caller hears when he’s waiting for his friend to answer her phone, is another version.

Now mobile phone users can download all sorts of “co-mingling bits” off the Web. Some of these bits happen to be musical. Some of them are unrecognizable from what the artist originally intended.

This kind of behavior is not listening to music; it is impression management. What is the effect, for example, when your friend hears Paranoid while he waits for you to pick up the phone? What is the effect if it were I Can Hear You Breathe?

Music companies think  this new form of music consumption can save the industry. They hope that album sales will be replaced with mobile phone downloads of full tracks. They are wrong.

Consider the following numbers from eMarketer.

Full track downloads as percentage of ringback and ringtone downloads:
2006: 23%
2007: 33%
2008: 47%

While the share is growing, it is certainly not replacing album sales. Artists should recognize that mobile phone music is not “music” but the public adornment of their art. And music companies should recognize that mobile phones will not save a bloated and dying industry.

Why do ethnography?

Ethnographic research is mandatory for all design. Why? Because the role of design is to improve people’s lives. This you cannot do unless you know what people’s lives really are like — and not what charts and graphs and tables are like. Why do ethnography? Here are some clear reasons.

1. People don’t know what they actually want: Would anybody ask for a translucent mirror? That’s what they now get at Prada. The dressing room’s at Prada ’s flagship New York store allow you to do something you normally do — but better. Shoppers can first view outfits on themselves, then can invite their friend’s to view their outfit — but turning the mirror into a window. Instead of coming out of the dressing room, leaving your handbag behind, you can instead simply click a button with your foot, and show your new outfit to a friend.This innovation did not come from asking people what they want, but by thinking about the process of buying and trying on clothes.
   
2. Context matters: Most people who design mobile phones don’t think that electricity has anything to do with their product. But they are wrong. Researchers in Africa have learned that when the power goes out, people can’t charge their mobile phones. The solution? Various forms solar and wind-powered chargers.Designers must know where their product will be used. Deep insight into that context can only come from knowing the context.
3. People lie: A well known example of urban ethnography finds a contradiction. People say they want a quiet space to eat lunch, but when you watch lunchtime routines in urban spaces, people do anything but seek out quiet spaces. Now are they lying to be naughty? To be elusive? No, they lie because they believe the “normative” or “should do” practice of eating lunch is a quiet experience.Actual experience plays out much differently.
4. Designers design symbols — which can’t be understood through numbers: The reason why people love quantitative research so much is because it is short and easy to communicate. You know the “average” household income, instead of having to think of all the possible household incomes. You know how many people answered “yes” to a pre-defined question.Designers are designing or adapting symbols. They cannot do so without knowing what they represent. But you can’t summarize symbols. Symbols *are* summaries already — and not numerical summaries.A national flag conveys many ideas for people within that nation state (and many more for those outside it). Likewise, a kitchen stove is a symbol that conveys much about the household, gender relations, and family life. This cannot be conveyed in the “average” number of kitchen stoves.

Many designers will take numbers or focus group research or even usability test results and design their products. They may even improve people’s lives that way. But short observational research provides “thick description” that all designers need.

Designing for time use

We all seem to be running out of time. Time use is an important but often overlooked aspect of design. What do designers need to know about time and time use?

• Types of Time

We don’t all use or experience time in the same way. Scholars call two types of time “monochroncity” and “polychronicity.” Polychronicity is defined as the extent to which individuals do more than one task at once. “Polychrons” tend to overlap tasks, dovetail their activities to “hit more than one bird with a stone” and are overall more comfortable with a variability in time sequencing. Monochrons, by contrast, prefer strict planning, a knowable a predictable sequence of events, and a general uniformity in the understanding of time.

These two types of time mean two types of design outcomes: one that is intended for the multi-tasking user and one that is for the single-tasking user. Designers should know ahead of time which type of time to incorporate in their work.

• Temporal Impact On Creativity

Madjar and Oldham found that time orientation, time pressue and task rotation is related to creativity. People who were polychronic and rotated through creative tasks (creating marketing plans) tended to be produce more creative results. Monochronic people tended to produce more creative results when they proceeded sequentially through tasks. Both groups had less creative results when they perceived intense time pressure.

• Tips for Designing For Time Use

1. Temporal Disruption for Users: Recognize you are disrupting users’ temporal process, which is often taken-for-granted and invisible. This disruption can be significant in that is will increase stress, anxiety and may elicit negative responses. This is especially important for designers of technology. Research has shown there is a large and often unintended impact through poorly designed technology.
2. Agency/Client Temporal Disconnect: For those of you in agencies working with clients, recognize your own working process may differ from your clients’. This may result in miscommunications about expectations of temporal consistency. Your clients may be monochrons and expect you to be the same.
3. In-house Temporal Disconnect: Managers tend to have more control over their work flow. They also tend to order themselves monochronically. But those further down the totem pole tend to have little control and are often polycrhonic as a result (often unwillingly). Managing a good design practice is ensuring that every worker has some autonomy in their temporal practice. Let monochrons be monochrons.
4. Your Own Creativity: Are you monochronic or polychronic? Your team likely has a mixture of both. Find out which one you are and try to engineer situations that match your orientation.

What Designers Can Learn From Facebook’s Beacon: the collision of “fronts”

The blogosphere (and even the regular old newspaper-sphere) is alight with stories of Facebook’s online advertising flop, Beacon. What can designers learn from this flop? It’s not about privacy; it’s about the presentation of self. People have different “selves” for different places — virtual or otherwise — and designs must be consistent with these variety of selves.

Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow posted an interesting story on InformationWeek that predicted the decline of Facebook because of its own success. He predicts that the more people that are one Facebook, the more confusing it is. Your “creepy coworkers,” your boss, and your friends you met at Burning Man are all in the same “place,” making it confusing, embarrassing and difficult for everyone.

What Doctorow is really describing is sociologist Erving Goffman’s notion of “the front.” Using the theatre as a metaphor Goffman argued that we actually “perform” multiple selves. Each place we go has a “front” that we learn to incorporate. A front has a wardrobe, a setting, a decor, make-up, a script and stage direction. We have a “front stage self” that we perform for everyone to see, a “back stage self” for only our closest intimates to see, and a “core self,” which is deeply private.

A doctor, for example, has a front that includes an office, a lab coat, a stethoscope and medical jargon. This is her “front stage” self. But when she’s talking to her best friend, she may use a “back stage self,” being less formal, not wearing a lab coat, or using less formal language. Her “core” self is secretly wishing she were a full-time marathoner, but she tells no one that.

Facebook’s Beacon didn’t work because it forces people to use multiple fronts AT THE SAME TIME. If I tag a recipe from Epicurious.com, but I broadcast that fact to friends that perceive me to be a party girl, I have a collision of fronts. If my boss demands to be my friend, I have a collision of fronts. If I rent The Notebook on Netflix, and my friends think I am a Goth, I have a collision of fronts.

Facebook’s Beacon forces its users to combine multiple selves. Goffman considers the collision of fronts to be a source of embarrassment or shame. Take, for example, the hilarious “Meeting in a Swimming Pool” gag on Just for Laughs. Swimmers have their swimming front (including a bathing suit, casual demeanour) and forced into a meeting, with its serious demeanour and fully clothed attendants. This is embarrassing.

Facebook has done the same thing by forcing its users to expose their selves to different fronts simultaneously. It is embarrassing, even shameful.

What Designers Can Learn From Facebook’s Beacon

• Discover your users’ fronts: If you are designing a product or a virtual place, ask your potential users what they consider the character of this “place” to be. Is is a formal place? Is it a casual atmosphere? What kinds of “props” are expected here? What would be an embarrassing topic of conversation or incident?
• Design using the theatre metaphor: Make the product consistent with that place, as if you were writing a play. Ensure that what you design is part of a script that users understand or expect.
• Pay attention to embarrassment: If your users mention shame or embarrassment in any way, gently press them about it. Discover the character of the “collision of fronts” that is the source of that embarrassment, and, above all, avoid forcing users to feel embarrassment.

Update: The New York Times is reporting that Facebook’s lawyers have not succeeded in having documents about its founder Zuckerman removed from an online magazine. These documents are “embarrassing.”

Update (12/19/07): Mashable is reporting that FB is now allowing people to “group” their friends, but they haven’t quite mastered the collision of fronts problem.

Designers as playwrights: scripting design outcomes

Designers don’t really see themselves as playwrights but in reality, designers are writing scripts – complete with stage directions – for every user. And like all actors, what users really want to do is direct.

The French government learned this the hard way. In a fit of charity, the government decided Africa needed electric light. Noting that African countries often lacked centralized electricity systems, French engineers designed battery-powered lights and sent them to Africa. The lights were designed to be robust systems that could withstand the rugged African countryside. It was envisioned that many owners of these lights would proudly use them for decades. Instead, the engineers delivered lights that were difficult to install, very quickly burned out, and proved almost impossible to repair. Quite a few African homes were then decorated with useless battery packs.

What as the problem? French engineers – despite their noble intent – designed lights that were only useful to docile users. The play they wrote was in three acts:

Act 1: turn on light.
Act 2: burn out light.
Act 3: do nothing with the light ever again.

When I made toast this morning in my kitchen, the script writers for the toaster did not consider the “set” of my kitchen, nor did they consider the supporting actor, my husband.

Their script went something like this:

Act 1: User takes two pieces of toast and places them in the two slots. User pushes down the plunger. Toaster toasts the bread. User waits until bread is cool enough to handle, and places toast delicately on a plate. Curtain. Applause.

But the actual script went something like this.

Act 1: Sam pulls bread out of freezer and then pulls toaster out of the cupboard where they store it. Toaster bottom opens up (again) and spills crumbs all over the floor. Sam plugs in toaster and separates two pieces of frozen bread.

She places only one slice in a slot and presses the plunger. She begins chatting with her husband, not noticing that she chose the wrong slot for a single slice. Toast pops up, decidedly still frozen. Curtain.

Intermission: Getting orange juice

Act 2: Sam moves slice to correct slot and presses plunger again. Toast toasts and pops up. Again, while chatting with her husband, she does not realize the bread is very hot. She burns her fingers on the toast, dropping it. Curtain. Curse words.

Design scripts need to be clear, concise, and above all, consider active users. When you design a product, a print ad, or a Web site, consider the script you are writing. What are your assumptions? What is the “set” of the eventual “play”? Are there supporting characters? Consider how you want your script to end before you start writing it.