Paper short abstract:

Human-centred design promises familiar territory for anthropologists. Investigations of 'what people want and do' with technologies are centred within the design process yet are often lost. This paper explores inventive modes of making space for the anthropological in the digital design classroom.

Paper long abstract:

User experience and user research in human-centred design promises familiar territory for anthropologists inserted into computer science and design disciplines. In these areas, investigations of 'what people want' and 'what people do' with technologies are usually centred within the design and development process. But when it comes to educating designers, the core component of the work for someone who is anthropologically trained, is to expand the essentialised notion of a 'user' and the archetypal experience. Standardised toolkits, formulaic design frameworks and innumerable guidelines and principles struggle to encompass 'thick descriptions' of people and their everyday intra-actions with technology. The challenge then becomes, how to rework established methodologies to consider people, contexts, and the social lives of things. By reflecting on the strangeness of doing digital anthropology 'in' the HCI community, this paper offers some insights into how to use core anthropological theories to speak to ways of designing everyday technology and its use. Channelling the legacies of Suchman, Orr, Irani, Dourish and others, I highlight how anthropological research in HCI has been incorporated into the toolkits and guidelines. Guidelines which are then critiqued and de-formalised in the classroom through participatory modes of teaching digital anthropology and critical inquiry so that it speaks to design and against essentialised versions of 'the human' in human-computer interaction.