Techno-Anthropology for Design

This chapter presents the principles of anthropology-driven design, explaining and examining the ideas and motivations behind basing technology design on ethnography and user participation. That is, anthropology-driven design is presented as a design process where analytical findings derived from ethnographic field studies are used in combination with participatory design techniques in order to promote democratic participation as well as mobilize the users knowledge as a resource in the design process. This ‘new move’ may be said to create new types of significant proximity between Anthropology, Science and Technology Studies (STS), Moral Philosophy, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Participatory Design (PD) and a range of technical disciplines