Ethnography & Design

Recent developments in design practice, particularly in the area of new technologies, have led to an increased relevancy for ethnographies of material culture. And while themes being explored across a range of disciplines have become increasingly applicable to contemporary ethnography and design, a lack of translation efforts between disciplines keeps practitioners blind to innovations in other fields.

Sapient has pioneered the use of ethnographic methods in the design of consumer and business products. To extend its user research, Sapient has funded an exploratory research project with INCITE on the connections between innovative ethnography, critical cultural theory, and design. This project is called AESOP (Applied Ethnographic Studies of Practice).

The goal of the AESOP project is to pair INCITE's methodological inventiveness with Sapient's expertise in the field of new technology and systems design in order to create research and research methods which are both practicable and theoretically innovative. Intense collaboration is the cornerstone of the project, and outputs range from industry and conference papers to academic publications to ideas for new products and services.

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