I am taking a graduate seminar this semester on ethnographic analysis with Dr. Douglas Holmes. The project for the term is to produce an exploratory research proposal.
See part one, the research problem.
Research Question & Hypothesis
Minecraft Bloc
How are iamamiwhoami, Minecraft, and the Curators of Sweden Project situated within a practice of design and the context of Swedish innovation and discourse? The most common argument for why Sweden has fostered innovations in technology, music, business and other areas of design is that the nation of Sweden has strong educational and research investments that allow its citizens the knowledge, mobility and funding to thrive. The Swedish government website answers this question (What makes Sweden so innovative?) by straightforwardly stating that “the country invests heavily in research, encourages critical thinking from an early age and is open to international influences” (Krutmeijer 2013). However, this perspective lacks the nuance necessary to grasp the complexities of design as practice. It fails to encompass the social and environmental factors that influence the development of design practices as they mesh with the individual histories, motivations and projects of the designers. Further, these social institutions of education, research, governance, and social welfare are themselves design projects that have had equally as interesting impacts and histories as this project’s proposed focuses. Hanging the success of one project on the success of another can not adequately capture the complexities of Swedish design and largely ignores the individual agency of the designers.
At the heart of this project is a question about design and creativity and how creative projects are rooted in the social life and discourse of the design, designer and user. Traditionally, the field of design has been dominated by marketing and business professionals that rely on “abstract marketing segmentation models that are based loosely on factors thought to influence consumer purchasing” (Graffam 2010:1). Even after the establishment of ethnography in design in the late 1990s and early 2000s, ethnography is often relegated to the collection of user information and opinions by business professionals who are unable to find meaning or usefulness in other ethnographic ventures into design (Graffman 2010:2).
However, design anthropologists since the late 2000s and early 2010s have made inroads in the field and theory of design (Graffman 2010, Suchman 2011). Design anthropologists have turned their ethnographic lens to the designers and the design process rather than on the user alone. Victor Margolin in his 2002 introduction to The Politics of the Artificial argued that if “designers are going to realize the full potential of design thought, then they should also learn to analyze how the situations that frame design practice are themselves constructed” (241). Ethnographers in the field of design are now poised to create a more holistic picture of how design practice comes into being through designers and users and their complex social relationships and discourses. This holistic picture can be used to create innovations in the business of design as well as provide rich material for a greater understanding of human creativity within the field of anthropology.
This project’s aim is to use these three Swedish design projects as seeds to delve into the complex relationships between designer, user and social discourse. I expect to find that each product is enmeshed in social contexts beyond those each was designed for (e.g. @Sweden was designed for the social engagement of Swedish citizens and potential international tourists and investors). I argue that the individual histories, and motivations of each actor involved in the project deeply shaped its outcome and that each actor was in turn deeply shaped by their personal history and engagement with social discourses of Sweden, their industries, and the international community.
iamamiwhoami
I also I suggest that users engaged in the design process in expected ways (e.g. iamamiwhoami was designed to engage online communities as part of the development of each new video) and unexpected ways (e.g. the mistaken belief held by many that the iamamiwhoami project was a teaser for Christina Aguilera’s Bionic album, which gave iamamiwhoami international klout and was used as evidence of the failure of Bionic’s potential) that altered and transformed each project beyond its “design.”
Sources Cited
Graffam, Gray. 2010 “Design Anthropology Meets Marketing.” Anthropologica, 52(1): 155-164.
Margolin, Victor. 2002 The Politics of the Artificial: Essays on Design and Design Studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Suchman, Lucy. 2011 “Anthropological Relocations and the Limits of Design.” Annual Review of Anthropology, 40:1-18.
Krutmeijer, Eva. 2013 “What makes Sweden so innovative?” Sweden.se: The Official Gateway to Sweden. Electronic resource, http://www.sweden.se/eng/Home/Business/Innovation/Reading/What-makes-Sweden-so-innovative/. Accessed September 23, 2013.
