I was hired as an anthropologist to ‘observe people’ at one of the most famous design firms — here’s what I have learned.
Google Photos app is always surprisingly good in showing me ‘what happened on this day 5 years ago?’ Today, popping up on the app on my smartphone was a picture of me with a group of ‘elite designers’ at one of the world’s top design firm. I won’t mention this firm’s name but you are very likely to have heard of it.
In 2016, with a newly minted PhD in social science (anthropology) with a technical background in architecture, I craved the opportunity to use what I have learned to make a positive difference in the world. I didn’t think twice when an HR staff of one of the most respected design firms in the world reached out to me on LinkedIn.
There, I was given the perfect title of an “Anthropologist-in-Residence.” Sort of like an organizational psychologist, the title’s premise was that I would get to learn about the design businesses as an insider and do what I was trained to — observing people in the office like a ‘cultural spy’ (AKA ‘anthropologist’).
Note: it has been a hot trend for quite some time now for top businesses to hire anthropologists: ‘Anthropology Inc.’
Quantitative data scientists and number crunchers may help businesses secure loans and convince board members to make an investment, but anthropologists who constantly ‘look for qualitative clues’ are the ones who often define terrains for new products and services.
There is a long and exciting history of how top companies like Apple, IBM, Samsung successfully put anthropologists to work in the business world. Often in the role of ‘design researchers,’ these anthropologists spend time to observe and from that build a hypothesis about new products and services for which the society might be waiting.
The design research pioneer Jane Fulton Suri, for instance, is well-known for her ability to extract a new value proposition from observing people acting naturally in a particular situation.
Over the next few months, I was at the design firm to interact with basically everyone — not just the full-time designers but also contractors, interns, office maids, construction workers, clients, restaurant staff and business owners in the area, employees of other companies in the same compound, and visitors to the office’s public events as well as visitors from other offices around the globe. While most of my interactions took place in the playful-looking office of the firm, the most revealing moments came from carrying out field research with the team.
The remaining of this post will walk you through some of the most troubling moments I have and how might we avoid them.
First, the religious focus on tape-recording can backfire.
The research team that I worked with were extremely obsessed with ‘capturing revealing quotes’ from the informants.
There is a fine line between taking notes to capture what isn’t said, and deliberately trying to capture some ‘particular quotes’ that will be handy for a video presentation to the clients.
There were many instances during which I felt that we could have learned so much more had there not been recording devices, notes, or writing tools present and that we design researchers would simply listen with their full attention. We don’t have to be told that we act differently when there’s a camera pointing at us. Most people get nervous when everything that they share gets written down or recorded.
The use of camera often distances the informants from the researchers. Design researchers must evaluate the situation based on our understanding of the interviewee’s personality and concerns.
A telling anecdote I had was when I ran out of battery on my camera so I could no longer record anything: It was only then that my interviewee said to me “That’s great; now I can begin to tell you the truth.”
Second, lack of respect often leads to a misleading clue.
Whether or not we are design researchers, we should always treat our informants as human beings, rather than as ‘dictation machines.’
As an anthropologist, the best technique I learned when trying to learn from someone is to make they feel as though we are ‘friends’ therefore making it ‘safe [for them] to talk.’ That is, forming a relationship with the interviewee by building a genuine rapport is a starter.
In reality, though, I witnessed many instances when the design research team simply marched into the domestic spaces of our informants, often refusing their kind offerings of snacks and tea, relying on a translator to hear what the informants had to share, and religiously doodling everything onto post-it notes, without making any attempt to genuinely build a relationship with the interviewees.
Iconized as the ‘emblems of innovation,’ piles of post-it notes may have been considered by some researchers as “piles of data” at the end of the interview process. Yet, the question that remains is how many of those contained anything meaningful if they are what the interviewees share with someone they did not trust?
In other words, mechanically recording all that comes out of the mouths of interviewees and informants isn’t useful. They, instead, become ‘noise’ that distracts designers from achieving desired service ideation.
Third, a ‘professional distance’ creates distance from truths.
The golden rule to fieldwork in design research methods is to always make informants ‘feel comfortable enough’ to be willing to share insights. In reality, design researchers prefer ‘keeping a distance’ in order to forge the scripts that they want to write about the informants.
For example, on a research trip, I arrived early as my driver was a local who knew many road shortcuts. I took advantage of having an ample amount of time to chat with an interviewee to learn about his life, work, family, hobbies, and so on. Not only did he permit me to ask whatever I felt would be useful to us, but also enthusiastically and congenially showed me pictures of his old and future homes on his smartphone. As for the project we were trying to understand the need of a new homeowner like him, I was able to connect his lifestyle, expectations and pressures in life through the revealing stories that he shared with me as he felt comfortable talking to me as ‘an empathetic pair of ear’ rather than a market researcher.
During the formal interview with the rest of the team once they had arrived, this interviewee, however, did not say anything as revealing as the casual chat that the two of us had. It was only after that interview that he sent me a few written details for me to make sense of his personal issue with the idea of homeownership, which happened to be so structural that millions of breadwinners in the family like him were facing. He never spoke a word about this during the formal interview. “I didn’t think your friends would care; and I didn’t feel that I could trust them with an embarrassing insight from my own life,” said he.
We are human beings and we all want to be recognized as one even when we are research subjects. For this, honest and friendly engagement with local people and local culture is, I suggest, an essential element to help researchers bond with local interviewees.
Forth, inflexibility costs a lot.
If design research is to be effective, flexibility needs to be its core tenet.
Unlike conventional market research, design research seeks to understand what our informants find hard to tell us directly.
Sometimes they do not know it, but sometimes they just do not know what they would want because what they want is not clear to them.
In many instances, I found our researchers sticking to a plan that we had even though we knew that making small changes would get our informants to ‘trust us more’ or to think that we’re more serious than any other market researcher to whom they had given an interview.
At the firm, there was a reason why we always bought flight tickets and hotel bookings that were modifiable — but, at least in my experience working with the team, we never took advantage of that. There was an instance whereby we looked at each other and nodded that we had just lost a day for an unplanned reason and it would be necessary to extend our research trip, but in the end, as we decided to vote, we flew back just to ‘stick to the plan,’ which was considered to be the ‘professional’ thing to do.
In instances such as this, I find the spirit of being a fieldworker to be absent in the researchers.
Fifth, not seizing all scholarships is an opportunity cost.
Design researchers, like professional anthropologists, should expose themselves as thoroughly as possible to the local points of view within the limited timeframe that the project provides. Perhaps because I was the only person with an academic (as in, not a professional) Ph.D. at the firm, my colleagues were skeptical about my ability to be ‘practical.’
I, too, must admit that I was somehow guilt as charge. But the only reason why I didn’t become a university lecturer right away after my Ph.D. was because I wanted to learn more about how to be more practical. While there may be good reasons for many to perceive academic scholarship as too idealistic and often lacking an understanding of the reality of commerce, I only see the natural relationship between them.
“We’re doing commercial, not academic research” has been one of the main reasons given by design researchers for pushing back against taking advantage of the plethora of knowledge made available by academics.
I believe that all research should be based on the methodological rigor that the various academic disciplines have provided us, but with the flexibility to have the findings shaped and re-shaped by contingent factors that may not be parts of the original inquiry. Time is limited and no one, academic and commercial researchers alike, is immune from having to strategize the use of their time to pursue a systematic investigation of matters or phenomena that interest us.
All research, in essence, is then an attempt to derive the most informed understanding of something under the time and financial constraints, to which a good question and the right methodological approach are central. I think that the only distinction that we should be making is not between academic and commercial, but ‘between the good and the bad’ research.
Sixth, there is a fine line between being a ‘cross-pollinator and an ‘anti-experts’ design researcher.
We need both experts and those who could help the experts in bringing their expertise down to the level of the users, yet I’ve seen projects whereby experts in particular fields were not welcome.
To be a ‘cross-pollinator,’ researchers have to spread themselves thinly and deeply (AKA, the T-shaped diagram). In other words, one cannot be interdisciplinary without first having a strong knowledge of a single discipline on which to build the T-shaped extension. We are all experts in a particular field and when there are broad projects we would benefit from engaging with experts in other fields that are relevant to the project.
Yet, because of the idea that experts are ‘rigid’ (and therefore should stay away from) there’re countless instances where I could not think of a worse kind of results. For example, there was a team that was working on a project related to neurobiology vis-a-vis the effect of electromagnetism on the brain of a toddler that did not have a neuroscientist. The team only consisted of graphic and industrial designers.
There was also a team working on an urban planning project that did not have any experts on the land economy, but a full team of avid copyeditors to marvel public relations materials for the project. There was also a design project for a language school that did not have anyone who seemed to have basic understanding of or training in language acquisition, just a handful of industrial designers who were only interested in designing new types of desks and chairs to stimulate learning.
We don’t want to whole team full of people from the same background. That won’t lead to a new idea because they are all trained to look at a problem in a certain way. But the point is not to do away with expertise altogether, but a sweet spot between the two.
Seventh, entitlement felt by researchers is the true enemy.
IDEO co-founder Tom Kelly’s once said that to understand the unmet needs, we must be “willing to search for clues in the trash bin.” The essence of this quote, I believe, is the doing away with the sense of entitlement.
For instance, in a project that I was involved with, I felt strongly that we should be spending time shadowing our informants. This idea was unanimously rejected by the rest of the design research team and the reason for it was (and I quote in verbatim) “too much of a hassle.”
Needless to say, I was very disappointed that we ended up driving back to town — to the comfort of the five-star hotel — that we had booked and a full-scale western breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant the next day.
I was appalled because I thought that spending the night with our relocated informants would allow us to get a glimpse of how they managed and navigated their time, e.g, how far did they have to walk to get their fresh produce in the morning? What did they do in the time between sending their grandkids to school and picking them up? And, what’re the organized and ad hoc activities and social relations among neighbors?
At the end of the day, these residents are the real users of the design that we hoped to deliver, and understanding their lives was therefore of utmost importance. I thought this was not only an apt but also the only way, as there was only so much one could learn from simply listening to and following them as they go about their daily lives.
There’s a big gap between the lives of elite designers who are making above the average income and the ordinary people. Entitlement only creates an echo chamber.
Eighth, taking away the modern day’s abundance of comfort can be useful.
There’s a truth in the saying that “necessity is the mother of innovation.”
Take the kidney-stone-removing bed invented by a farmer in Jiangxi for example, for 230 yuan (less than US$40). 51-year-old Qinghua Zhu invented a bed from local materials available in a typical welding shop to solve his wife’s kidney stone problem without having to resort to expensive medical treatment in a hospital in the city. They couldn’t afford that anyway. After rapid prototyping, Zhu came up with a bed that grips his wife’s body tightly to it while the 360-degree rotation of her body takes place with the help of the vibration created by a tractor driving wheel to dislodge the kidney stone.
Not only does the invention work, but it’s also completely replicable.
Zhu’s invention is an exemplar of the significant economic aspect of design research that leads to ingenious solutions to problems. When you have to deal with problems that you don’t have the resources to tackle, your inner sense of creativity is automatically being encouraged to come up with right-on-the-spot innovations.
In this sense, Zhu is an example of a great design researcher — and he also ‘designed by research.’ It’s very unlikely for anyone to be able to think about anything creative when surrounded only by convenience.
There would be a sense that there are no problems to solve, and no design questions worth tackling. Design research is about finding the domain where empathy and practicality overlap — and design researchers usually think about something innovative when they have to live with old objects, ideas, or services with which they are not content.
Conclusion
The criticisms [of design thinking] are several: that design thinking is poorly defined; that the case for its use relies more on anecdotes than data; that it is little more than basic commonsense, repackaged and then marketed for a hefty consulting fee.
As some of these design thinking concepts have sloshed into the world of policy, and social change efforts have been re-cast as social innovation, the queasiness around the approach has also begun to surface in the field of public policy.
— Dr. Natasha Iskander, New York University
All the standard ‘malpractices’ of design thinking in this post so far has gotten me wonder whether or not the ‘design thinking’ enterprise is just a sham. Design firms continue to get new commissions and the so-called ‘design researchers’ in these firms continue to make money by inventing nothing.
To know why a design firms like the one I worked for still existed, I managed to interview a few people who served on the boards of directors of a few huge enterprises who hired us.
The answer I got was unanimous: “We needed to show to the shareholders that there’re spending on innovation.” It didn’t matter whether the desired innovation is an end result, as the keyword here was “to show” and not to create. In that sense, having a name of a ‘famous design firm’ once known for innovation on a the report made it easy for the shareholders to agree to the idea of spending the their money.
That said, I still believe that there’s a way to reverse the course of all these ‘abuses’ of design thinking industry.
First, design researchers must remember the discipline from which the idea of the practice that they engage came, namely anthropology, otherwise many invaluable methods get lost in translation.
For instance, flexibility is every anthropologist’s best friend. Once you have set boundaries confining the imagination of the processes of design and design research such as restricting informants to only those from groups with whom the researchers want to interact, the researchers miss out on the many things that one can learn from such interactions. This also includes ideas that could become springboards for creativity. Research ethics that fosters flexible and empathetic research approaches is also crucial to maximizing research opportunities in the service of creating effective designs.
Second, and I can’t stress this point enough, entitlement must be kept at the door’s step. Designers should not “assume” that they have already been equipped with the knowledge they needed to innovate. This ‘false sense of self-efficacy’ is extremely dangerous, and, as the earlier points in this post have shown, are the true enemies not of just innovation — but basically of all good ideas.
Finally, there’s so much that this short post can provide. I am sure I have left out so many things that are also important. I think that avid and experienced designers could help in setting the right tone for those becoming a member of the team by reinforcing the availability and encouraging the consumption of and the immersion in these resources by designers and design researchers.
Epilogue
P.S. I quit my role at this design firm after my role as an “Anthropologist-in-Residence” was terminated along with the project that I was originally hired to work in.
Afterwards, I used the knowledge gained from this experience to set up my own design consultancy based in my hometown, Bangkok, Thailand.
Our design research team consists of surprisingly open-minded and knowledge-hungry experts from a varies of fields, such as engineering, economics, medicine, urban studies, computer sciences, and, needless to say, anthropology. To still have one leg in the real-world so that we can continue to engage with the beneficiaries of our works, we all work full-time and keep our design consulting job as part-time. The kind of project that our consultancy takes are, often, small to medium-sized that has a potential for true social impact.
100 days of writing 