Fourth year anthropology students are asked to answer with simple prompt in Mason’s Anthropology 490 course. I admit, when I wrote this final paper for Professor Bickford three years ago, I was hoping employers would agree that anthropology does, in fact, matter. Now, I am thrilled to report that they do -- and that the world of applied anthropology is gaining more traction. The skills that anthropologists wield are sought after by cutting-edge development organizations, design companies, and consulting firms. Technology giants such as Google and Apple hire ethnographers, while Microsoft and Intel have in-house anthropologists and sociologists to gain a better understanding of their consumers.
I’d like to share with current SOAN students how anthropology has impacted my work in international development. From there, I’ll zoom out to trends in applied anthropology in general, and then focus in on a particular field: human centered design.
In my own work, I’ve relied heavily on the qualitative research skills I gained as an anthropology major. Currently, I work for an international nonprofit that works in closed societies and conflict areas to promote free expression, strengthen governmental accountability, and build more inclusive societies. Similar to how an anthropologist represents her informants, I act as a liaison between our implementation team and the donor. I conduct deep interviews with our team working in the field and design questionnaires for our participants to track our project’s progress and long-term impact. I design monitoring and evaluation plans that ensure we meet our project objectives and allow for course correction if we aren’t. Most importantly, I analyze our participants’ feedback for key insights that help us better meet their needs.
My experience has taught me that anthropology is inherently practical; once you’re taught certain observational skills, it’s nearly impossible to shut them off. Anthropologists are able to translate between various schools of thought -- be it between cultures, industries, or disciplines -- because we do not assume to understand a given system. Rather than looking for the easiest answer, we search for the most meaningful one. It is precisely this lens that has allowed businesses to better understand their customers and aid organizations to implement more impactful and sustainable projects.
For example, the consulting firm ReD Associates applies ethnography to study the customers of major brands such as Intel, Samsung, and Adidas, and has proven to find customer insights that have dramatically changed their marketing strategies. Although Adidas had previously been a brand for competitive athletes, ReD discovered an untapped market -- regular people who simply needed sportswear for a healthy lifestyle. After conducting immersive research with potential customers, ReD researchers sent 30 women a digital camera and asked them to document the reason they exercised. Twenty five sent back a picture of a little black dress. This was an unexpected response for a company who assumed its customers were primarily seeking a competitive edge.
Anthropological methods have begun to emerge under many different monikers in the private sector: corporate anthropology, user experience design, and consumer-centric strategy are just a few of these buzzwords. One field that I am particularly interested in is human centered design (HCD), which since the 1980s, has caught hold in the social sector. HCD is a creative problem solving tool that combines the heart of anthropology -- ethnography -- with best design practices. Championed by IDEO, a global design firm, this methodology has been applied to some of the most challenging problems in social sector work, including poverty, health care, agriculture, democracy and governance, and mobile banking to name a few.
Design thinking has three key tenets:
- Immersion: conducting field research to develop empathy for the group you wish to serve, while leaving preconceived notions behind
- Prototyping: use insights gathered from the community to design a solution, making ideas visible and tangible
- Iteration: solicit feedback from user group and (re)design
Those who adhere to the HCD process will attest that empathy is their greatest research tool. Like ethnography, this kind of design research gives voice and agency to beneficiaries. It revolves around the belief that the people who face a given problem are the ones with the key to its solution.
Human centered design is well-suited to development work because it focuses on the real people affected by development and aid programs. With an emphasis on context, HCD develops a nuanced understanding of a given problem, without applying assumptions or ready-made solutions.
This is particularly important in the development sector, where gaps between funders, implementers, and beneficiaries are seldom bridged. These inherent gaps, or open feedback loops, are part of why development has largely been implemented in a top-down fashion, with solutions borne from Western experts. In his essay, FeedBackLab co-founder Dennis Whittle critiques the existing status quo of development work, discusses a nascent shift towards bottom-up approaches. Unsurprisingly, he attributes discovering the flaws of his World Bank projects to an early conversation with an anthropologist.
Human centered design works to close those feedback loops by involving beneficiaries in project design. The iterative nature of design research calls for user feedback, allowing development practitioners to fail early (before implementation), and ultimately create a meaningful project that is more easily adopted. Ensuring buy-in from the community also promotes sustainability -- a seemingly unachievable goal for many implementers with short-term funding.
Anthropologists and other human behavior researchers are uniquely equipped to capture user feedback and guide this human centered design process. IDEO succinctly describes the value of ethnography in the design process in their Design Kit: “For too long, the international development community has designed solutions to the challenges of poverty without truly empathizing with and understanding the people it’s looking to serve. But by putting ourselves in the shoes of the person we’re designing for, human-centered designers can start to see the world, and all the opportunities to improve it, through a new and powerful lens.”
Human centered design is just one example of the positive potential of anthropology and ethnographic research. No matter the sector, anthropologists continue to hold valuable skills and insights in an increasingly complex and digital world. Now it’s up to us to be recognized as such.
April 04, 2016
