Design studies
Dilnot discussed the ability of the designer to address the public as citizens and not as consumers, and about infusing "humane intelligence" into the made environment.
It belongs rather to the extended realms of living things that are, as human beings ourselves are, a hybrid between these conditions.
[23] Design studies scholars also reference sociologist Bruno Latour when investigating the dynamics of the artificial.
Latour's concept of actor–network theory (ANT) portrays the social as an interdependent network of human individual actors and non-human, non-individual entities called actants.
These products (all artificial because they are made by people) constitute an increasingly large part of the world.
The built environment is the physical infrastructure that enables behavior, activity, routines, habits, and rituals, which affect our agency.
[25] There have been protests that the field of design studies is not sufficiently "geared towards delivering the kinds of knowledge and understanding that are adequate to addressing the systemic problems that arise from the coloniality of power".
This form of research requires the scholar to partake in the use of, or observe others use, a designed object or system.
[29] Other ethnographic techniques used by design studies scholars would fall more in line with anthropologists usage of the method.
Design ethnography emerged out of a movement in the late 1980s by organizations such as Xerox/PARC (Palo Alto Research Center], Institute for Research on Learning and Jay Doblin & Associates toward social science approaches in their product design and development efforts.
[30][31] In the 1990s, the research and design consultancy E-Lab (founded by former Doblin employees) took this approach further, pioneering a multidisciplinary methodology guided by anthropology and ethnography.
[30][32][31][33] E-Lab challenged conventional market research by prioritizing real-world user experiences and behaviors uncovered through fieldwork, then analyzing the data for patterns organized by explanatory frameworks.
This widened viewpoint allows the researcher to explore and map out the objects many interactions, identify its role within the network, and in what ways it is connected to stakeholders.
A Foucauldian approach specifically will analyze the power structures put in place, manipulated by, or used within a designed thing or object.
It is the longest established, multi-disciplinary worldwide society for the design research community, founded in the UK in 1966.
The Society aims to play an important role in shaping an inclusive design history.
