Long Road

Because the Mukurtu project and now a new project I am working on with the Plateau Center for American Indian Studies at WSU (the website for this project will launch in August) both involve HCI (human computer interface) questions, I have delved into the world of interface design over the last few years. I knew that there were many anthropologists working for folks like Intel and Cisco, but I didn’t know there was an emerging field: “design anthropology.” In this article Dori Tunstall describes what she means by the term.

Design anthropology seeks to answer the question how do the processes and artifacts of design help come define what it means to human. It explores a wide range of interests related to design practice: how interfaces can be developed based on values of shared learning versus individual study; how the adoption of technologies can lead to greater social equality and inequalities over time; and how not just the words but the meanings behind words change as you design for one culture versus another. These are all issues of the human context that has grown more complex. Design anthropology is the field to help you feel confident in your design decisions by showing you the global ramifications of past, current, and potential communications, artifacts, and experiences as they affect the human context.

The article is well worth the read. But what really grabbed my attention was her bio at the end:

Dr. Elizabeth “Dori” Tunstall is an Associate Professor of Design Anthropology at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in the School of Art and Design. She is a leader in field of Design Anthropology and teaches Research Methods for Art and Design and critical design and governance courses. She has worked for Sapient, Arc Worldwide, and AIGA’s Design for Democracy and holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Stanford University.

She is a professor “of Design Anthropology” so presumably one can get a degree in this…or at least it is a subfield…a new subfield of anthropology? I’m all for it.