Engaging ethnography in the human-centered design technology classroom

Abstract

In design technology education, educators value student outcomes centered on concrete design ideas and a comprehensive understanding of prototyping. However, technology education must consider not only the general technology design process and quality but also human-technology interactions. Inevitably, designs for people are enmeshed in complex sociocultural contexts, inseparable from human needs, values, and desires. Given this need to comprehensively understand the user experience in design technology, ethnographic techniques are increasingly being used to holistically understand people, with the goal of improving their lives through human-centered design. To train design technology students in ethnography, this paper considers one model for teaching human-centered design, using ethnographic methods. Designing Technology for People, an undergraduate-level course offered at Purdue University, is co-taught by faculty from the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Technology Leadership & Innovation. Throughout the course, students gain experience conducting basic ethnographic research and analysis, in addition to developing a virtual engineer’s notebook and a design mock-up, shaped by their ethnographic findings. This paper turns to one case study, “The Squirrel Squad,” to ethnographically review how the course is taught and the value of co-teaching courses with specialists in both ethnography and design technology.