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Ramer, S. Angela. "Assessing Workplace Design: Applying Anthropology to Assess an Architecture Firm’s Own Headquarters Design." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2014. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc799508/.
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Corporations, design firms, technology, and furniture companies are rethinking the concept of the ‘workplace’ environment and built ‘office’ in an effort to respond to changing characteristics of the workplace. The following report presents a case study, post-occupancy assessment of an architecture firm’s relocation of their corporate headquarters in Dallas, TX. This ethnographic research transpired from September 2013 to February 2014 and included participant observation, employee interviews, and an office-wide employee survey. Applying a user-centered approach, this study sought to identify and understand: 1) the most and least effective design elements, 2) unanticipated user-generated (“un-designed”) elements, 3) how the workplace operates as an environment and system of design elements, and 4) opportunities for continued improvement of their work environment. This study found that HKS ODC successfully increased access to collaborative spaces by increasing the size (i.e. number of square feet, number of rooms), variety of styles (i.e. enclosed rooms, open work surfaces), and distribution of spaces throughout the office environment. An increase in reported public transit commuting from 6.5% at their previous location to 24% at HKS ODC compares to almost five times the national public transit average (5%) and fifteen times the rate of Texas workers (1.6%) and Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX Metro Area (1.5%). This supports the real estate decision and design intent of the office that relocating near public transit would increase use (nearly six times that of reported use at 1919 McKinney, 6.5%). Additional findings and discussion relate to HKS ODC’s design enabling increased access to natural light and improved air quality, increased cross-sector collaboration, increased connection to downtown Dallas and engagement with the larger Dallas architectural community, as well as the open office environment encouraging education between all employee levels. Discrepancies between designed ‘flexibility’ and work away from the desk are explored along with the role of technology to facilitate work without replacing face-to-face interaction. This work also identifies key challenges with the design and employee experience and provides recommendations for addressing areas of concern for continued improvement of the workplace design. Continued user-centered research in the field of workplace design is necessary to assess the effect of current interventions in other office environments for comparison and inform future endeavors.
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Levick-Parkin, Melanie. "How women make : exploring female making practice through Design Anthropology." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2018. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/21901/.
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This thesis explores the process of female making as a creative and socio-political act and how/where/why this creative labour gets ‘spent’, in terms of energy, outcomes and beneficiaries as well as how it might be situated in the context of contemporary Western Design ontology. Fieldwork took place over a period of 10 Months, with 11 female participants in two countries, during a number of repeat encounters, which included co-making, participant and ethnographic observations as well as informal interviews. The findings are presented as focused narratives based on three of the participants, through a series of ethnographic/auto-ethnographic accounts, which each conclude in a discussion based on my thematic analysis of that particular woman’s making. Drawing on the fieldwork with all 11 women, the three chapters which follow weave together data and theory into thematic discussions and analysis. The research documents and makes visible both the women’s making practices and things acting upon it, through observations of the participants making, and conversations and co-making with participants. A design anthropological approach of ‘anthropology as correspondence’ (Gatt & Ingold, 2013; Ingold 2013a) informed all data collection, with informal interviews providing the core data and focus of analysis, supported by analysis of visual data such as photography and moving image, as well as field notes and reflective auto-ethnographic writing, based on my experiences with the women and their making. As a design anthropological study, it situates and analyses female creative practices in a broader human ‘making’ context, whilst utilising a range of ethnographic, practice-led and co-creative methods, situated within a framework of a feminist inquiry and design discourse. Key theorists informing the analysis are Karen Barad (2007, 2008), Elizabeth Grozs (1999, 2010), Erin Manning (2016), Doreen Massey (2005) and Tim Ingold (2007, 2013a), whilst building on the work of Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock (1981), Cheryl Buckley (1986) and Sheila Rowbotham (1973/a, 1973/b), amongst many others. Key theories triangulated within the discussion and analysis stem from Material Feminism, Design Anthropology and Design Theory. This triangulation, woven around and into the observations and accounts of lived experiences, forms an emergent proposition which considers how female enactments of creative labour can provide us with ways to critique and un-ravel contemporary Design ontology, its modes of production and consumption. Drawing on post-capitalist scholars such as Kathy Weeks (2011), amongst others, and the writing of Raoul Vaneigem (1967/2006), the penultimate chapter ‘Implication for Design Pedagogy’ discusses why the implication my findings should be considered in relation to design pedagogy and education yet to come, and to ‘futures yet unthought’ (Grosz, 1999).
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Curtis, Kelley. "Designing Interactive Multimedia for the Anthropology Exhibit Gallery." [Tampa, Fla. : s.n.], 2003. http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/SFE0000079.
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Van, Loon Carey Brunner, Frances Berdan, and Edward A. Stark. "EthnoQuest: An interactive multimedia simulation for cultural anthropology fieldwork." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 1999. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/1938.
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EthnoQuest, an interactive multimedia CD-ROM simulating a visit to a fictional village named Amopan, was conceived as an adjunct to college-level classroom instruction in introductory anthropology courses. Since these classes typically involve large numbers of students, the logistics on conducting actual fieldwork pose serious problems for instructors and students alike. The conception of an engaging, interactive, accessible learning tool that incorporates appropriate pedagogical principles has found its ultimate expression in EthnoQuest.
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Hose, Linda J. "The pedagogy and politics of online education in anthropology." [Tampa, Fla] : University of South Florida, 2007. http://purl.fcla.edu/usf/dc/et/SFE0002180.
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Gregory, Brian. "Approaching Fallingwater: An Ethography of Place." TopSCHOLAR®, 1998. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/329.
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Fallingwater, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, has always been more than just a house. It has also functioned as a workplace, a tourist destination, "the best all-time work of American architecture," and a cultural symbol. By talking to some of the people involved in its history and by examining "autho-ethnographic" texts found within the community, I attempt to use ethnographic methods to understand a complicated site. Nestled in the rural Appalachian foothills of southwestern Pennsylvania, Fallingwater is also isolated. It is tempting for visitors to view it as a work of art "plopped down in the middle of nowhere." And yet Fallingwater is fundamentally related to its site, both in its use of local materials and the place it holds in local memory. An attempt is made to connect this one place to a broader cultural landscape, and to understand the social and historic currents that led to its construction and eventual elevation to tourist icon. For data, I rely primarily upon tape-recorded interviews conducted while working as an oral history intern at Fallingwater in the summer of 1997. Local perceptions of Fallingwater and the creative role local builders played in construction are examined, with the author concluding that at a site such as Fallingwater, sole responsibility for the creativity of the finished architectural form cannot be attributed to the mind of a lone creator. The author examines local manifestations of modern architecture in the vernacular landscape, and concludes that local builders struggled with the same forces of Modernity that influenced famous high-style modernist architects such as Wright. The project's scope reaches beyond the historical constraints of the initial oral history project, however, to include an ethnographic analysis of competing contemporary tourist landscapes at Fallingwater and at neighboring Ohiopyle State Park. While Ohiopyle offers an individualized, vernacular tourist experience, Fallingwater is experienced in a highly ritualized way. The ritual of experiencing Fallingwater is designed to effect change in the visitor and to spur the visitor on to environmental awareness and action. The author contends that an ethnographic analysis of Fallingwater allows for the humane consideration of a larger cultural phenomenon, Modernity. By examining local manifestations of broader cultural forces, the author contends that folklore has a contribution to make to cultural analysis. By closely examining the "texts" collected by folklorists—however broadly those texts are defined—a more contextual understanding of broader cultural phenomena may be obtained.
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Forlano, Penelope. "Making Custodians: A design anthropology approach to designing emotionally enduring built environment artefacts." Thesis, Curtin University, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/68407.
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My doctoral research through creative production takes a Design Anthropology approach to examine the person-object relationship typical of artefacts with long-term attachment and significance. I then speculate on the implications of these findings with the goal of designing enduring new built environment artefacts, surfaces, and furniture. The exegesis explores the context of this enquiry within design theory and practice and its significance, given the environmental impact of high levels of premature disposal and ‘fast’ consumption.
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Van, Keuren Scott 1969. "Design structure variation in cibola white ware vessels from Grasshopper and Chodistaas Pueblos, Arizona." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/278447.
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This study reviews previous research on ceramic design styles in archaeology and suggests that techniques for identifying the analytical individual in prehistory and using these data to reconstruct past behavioral patterns represents an untapped direction for further archaeological investigation. A new method for stylistic analysis is outlined and tested on a preliminary basis with a collection of prehistoric decorated ceramics. These data provide a foundation for reconstructing aspects of Southwest prehistory as well as providing a potential new direction for stylistic analyses in general.
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Anusas, Mike. "Beyond objects : an anthropological dialogue with design." Thesis, University of Aberdeen, 2018. http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=237173.
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This thesis, an anthropological dialogue with design, seeks to explore the formation of the material world beyond objects. The work is situated within the fields of design studies and social anthropology, and contributes to the emerging interdisciplinary field of design anthropology. It draws on my education and perspective as a designer and engineer, my field dialogues with contemporary practitioners and the writings of the media philosopher Vilém Flusser, the social anthropologist Tim Ingold and the architect Kengo Kuma. I begin with a consideration of the material world as all matter which forms the earth, its atmospheres and the dwellings and features of many organisms. Such a notion of the material world is abundant with life, energy and potential and recognises human perception as entwined with lineages of materials, making and transformation. However design has evolved, I argue, to become a practice that tends to obscure the energetic and entangled conditions of the world, by way of presenting materials in the form of objects; discrete and enclosed material entities. This results in an impoverishment of environmental perception and a clotting of the ecological currency of materials. To understand how materials come to be formed into objects, I attend to a site of contemporary engineering practice where designers work with materials, tools and computational media in the formation of a product: in this case the royal relay baton for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Drawing on a period of sustained participant observation with one Glasgow-based company, I observe how lines of practice course through intention, gesture, conversation, writing, drawing, modelling and making, as materials are projected and presented in object form. I highlight the specific dispositions and activities of individual practitioners as they orient their perception towards different ways of knowing materials and specific practices of formation. Here, it becomes evident that design is, fundamentally, a social practice, constituted in an ongoing dialogue between people, matter and energy. Drawing the strands together, I argue that design is not so much a point-to-point procedural process, as an active matrix of social, material and energetic interchange, in which performance and form are intertwined in the transformation of people, materials and surrounds. Within this matrix of activity, the condition of the object is notably evident - and often dominating - but not absolute or inevitable, and there always exist possibilities for manifestations of form beyond objects. Following this prospect, the thesis rounds not to a closure, but to an opening: to the possibility of design as a practice of material performance led by the attentiveness, critique and imagination of an anthropological education.
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Gaydos, Benjamin. "[ethno]graphic design." VCU Scholars Compass, 2007. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd_retro/98.
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Visual communication is a part of everyone's daily existence. It is a ubiquitous mode that shapes not only the environment that individuals inhabit, but the very identity of the individual. Graphic designers, who create the vast majority of the visual communication encountered, play a crucial role in the production of cultural identity. It is a necessity that designers understand that role, as agents of cultural production.[ethno]graphic design is an ever-evolving approach to graphic design which utilizes anthropological methods in the creative process. This document presents a collection of projects which take an anthropological approach to the design process, utilizing techniques developed by cultural anthropologists to aid the design process primarily ethnographic fieldwork, participant observation, collaboration, multivocal representation and reflexivity.
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Birnudóttir, Sigurðardóttir Júlía. "Practicing creativity : Landscape architects make future Stockholm." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Socialantropologiska institutionen, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-147539.
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Green urban spaces are a vigorous part in cities development, all over the world (Swanwick, Dunnet, & Wooley, 2003). These spaces are persistently constructed and negotiated over a creative process, which includes a network of actors, such as clients, designers, constructors, and users. This thesis addresses this process - with a case study of landscape architects in Stockholm, and their practice of creativity. The landscape architects present one group of actors involved in the process, where they design urban spaces for the future through their creative work. It begins with a mental image, an idea, and ends with a built site, a designed space. In reference to practice theory (Ortner, 1984 and 2006) and the biosocial becomings approach (Ingold, 2013), I analyze how creativity as a practice is socially produced by history, culture and power, through the biosocial growth of the creative agent, the landscape architect. Referring to Hallam and Ingold ́s definition (2007, p. 3), I understand creative practice as an improvisational process. I argue that creativity is accumulated, i.e. a becoming practice amongst becoming creative agents. While investigating the practice of creativity through a traditional participant observation, I primarily focus on sounds, where I listen to the practice, and use it as a method of collecting empirical data. With that method, I enrich the registration of sensor impressions (Borneman & Hammoudi, 2009, p. 19) during my fieldwork, providing a sonic dimension to the knowledge of creative practice amongst landscape architects.
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Batchelor, Ray. "Evolution, artefacts, meaning and design : the extent to which evolutionary theory can explain how and why humans attribute significance and meaning to the material world and the consequences of this for understanding design." Thesis, Bucks New University, 2004. http://bucks.collections.crest.ac.uk/9940/.
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The manner in which our ancestors and ancestor species negotiated their physical and social environments has had consequences for how we engage with artefacts today. Like language, the ability to attribute significance and meaning to artefacts is evolved and consists of a suite of interconnected adaptations. A model is articulated which, it is claimed, accommodates all the possible ways in which humans attribute significance and meaning to artefacts. It consists of two halves. Each element is considered in turn and accounts of their evolutionary origins are constructed. This sequence moves from the oldest to the most recently evolved: thus the first half - the sensory-kinetic-affective mode - includes ancient, reflexive, sensory (including the physical and kinetic) and perceptual responses originating in our ancestor species’ negotiation of their organic and inorganic environment; and the affective responses such as technical and aesthetic pleasures arising from such responses. The second half – the symbolic-narrative mode - embraces the attribution of symbolic or narrative meanings to artefacts which, I propose, prefigured, or co-evolved with the emergence of language and, like language, is an expression of symbolic thought. I argue that where symbolic meaning is intentionally ascribed to an artefact, some account will be taken of the data delivered by the sensory-kinetic-affective mode, such that those intending the meaning will often seek consonance between that data and the meaning intended, in order to strengthen the power of the artefact to act as an agent of social mediation. A central role is ascribed to a sensibility towards style, as the mechanism by which the two halves are united. This sensibility is highly attuned to physical characteristics, with the objective of intuiting something of the character, make-up and therefore, likely future behaviour of the maker, owner, or other with whom the artefact is associated. I call this resultant data tacit social intelligence. It is argued that practices which evolved during the 100,000 years or so in which Homo sapiens created artefacts by hand, using simple tools, despite the changed circumstances of manufacture, economics, technology and social and political organisation, have persisted into historical times and remain active today. In particular, artefacts continue physically to represent accumulations of behaviour. Thus, in creating or choosing to be associated with an artefact, we are conscious that others will interrogate it for signs of the behavioural values we are seen to esteem.
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Grange, Zoé. "La place de l'anthropologie dans le processus de production des innovations : analyse des conditions de production, diffusion et réception de l'anthropologie en entreprise." Thesis, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 2016. http://www.theses.fr/2016USPCB194.
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L'ambition de cette thèse est d'interroger une forme d'anthropologie émergente - l'anthropologie appliquée à des projets d'innovation en entreprise - dans un contexte où les opportunités de carrière à l'université sont minces, et l'intérêt des entreprises privées pour de nouveaux profils, croissant. Cette recherche appréhende les conditions de production, diffusion et réception de l'anthropologie appliquée à la consommation et à l'innovation en entreprise. Elle s'appuie pour cela sur les théories sociologiques de la consommation, de l'innovation et des organisations, ainsi que sur l'analyse approfondie du projet « IH » mené au sein de l'agence de design et d'innovation « IP » avec une dizaine d'industries partenaires sur le thème de l'habitat. Les données recueillies en situation relèvent d'une approche anthropologique et d'une approche sociologique qualitative, basées sur l'induction et sur les échelles micro et méso-sociales. Cette recherche questionne l'inscription de la pratique anthropologique dans le processus de production des innovations du projet « IH » comme une innovation pour les champs académique et professionnel, à partir d'une « participation observante » sur le terrain, en interrogeant un système d'acteurs inscrits directement ou indirectement dans une logique de projet. L'analyse des conditions de production, diffusion et réception de l'enquête anthropologique au sein d'un tel projet révèle que la pratique anthropologique se négocie à travers des interactions ancrées dans des relations de pouvoir, se renouvelle en fonction des contraintes et des effets de situation et se diffuse lorsqu'il y a usage, appropriation et donc réinterprétation de la matière. L'appropriation du travail anthropologique repose en effet sur un réenchantement de la réalité en phase de création, notamment parce que les acteurs du projet sont énormément déroutés par les pratiques des consommateurs dans leur espace domestique. Cette recherche suggère finalement que l'anthropologie appliquée à l'innovation et à la consommation au sein de l'agence « IP » est le fruit d'un « bricolage » qui repose sur une transgression du patrimoine académique et des normes régulant les pratiques d'innovation. Cette thèse fait donc l'éloge de la diversité, en reconnaissant la valeur de la pluralité des formes d'application de l'anthropologie ; l'éloge du mouvement, en mettant en exergue une potentielle évolution du paradigme scientifique de l'anthropologie ; et l'éloge du métissage, en montrant que la diffusion suppose très souvent une part de réinterprétation qui n'est pas compatible avec la volonté de préserver la pureté supposée de la pratique anthropologiqueThe goal of this thesis is to question an emerging kind of anthropology - anthropology applied to innovation projects within companies - and to do so in a context where career opportunities at the university are limited, and where the interest of private companies in new profiles is growing. Our research focuses on the conditions of production, diffusion and reception of anthropology applied to consumption and innovation in companies. To that end, it is based sociological theories of consumption, innovation and organisation, and on the "IH" project conducted via an in-depth analysis of "IP" innovation and design agency, along with about ten partner industries in relation to the habitat theme. Data collected in situ are analysed from anthropological and qualitative sociological approaches, based on induction and on micro and mesa-social scales. This research questions the inscription of anthropological practice within the "IH" project's innovations' production process as an innovation for professional and academic fields, based on observer participation, querying the system of actors directly or indirectly involved. The analysis of the conditions of reception, diffusion and production of the project shows that anthropological practice has to negotiate interactions anchored in power relationships, is renewed through constraints and situation effects, and is propagated when there is field data use, appropriation and re-interpretation. An appropriation of an anthropological study is based on a form of "re-enchantment" of the phase of creation, in particular because the project actors were much confused by consumers' practices in their domestic environment. Our research concludes by suggesting that anthropology when applied to innovation and consumption in the "IP" agency, results from a « bricolage » based on a transgression of academic approaches and of the norms that regulate innovation practices. This thesis therefore celebrates diversity, by recognizing the value of a plurality anthropology of the ways anthropology is applied; it celebrated the notion of movement, highlighting the potential evolution of the scientific paradigm of anthropology; and celebrates hybridation by showing that diffusion very often involves a form of re-interpretation that does not fit with the desire to protect the supposed purity of anthropological practice
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Snodgrass, Natalie Snodgrass. "Facilitating Diversity: The Designer's Role in Supporting Cultural Representations Through Multi-Script Type Design and Research." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1543259950281861.
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VIDELA, Ana Neuza Botelho. "Joalheria, arte ou design?" Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, 2016. https://repositorio.ufpe.br/handle/123456789/18521.
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A proposta do estudo visou comparar duas formas de fazer joalheria, uma mais próxima dos paradigmas da arte e outra com um viés mais comercial para, dessa forma, entender os processos que condicionam a atuação dos produtores das duas categorias. Neste sentido, o objetivo da pesquisa foi identificar em quais circunstâncias a joalheria é considerada arte, por ser uma categoria orientada para a produção de trabalhos mais experimentais, os quais podem ter a intenção de problematizar a ornamentação corporal ou a linguagem da joalheria ou, ao contrário, em que contexto é compreendido como uma atividade fruto do processo de design, adotando, porém, os pressupostos da joalheria para atender ao mercado. Do ponto de vista metodológico, distinguir as características dos produtos gerados a partir da influência dos dois campos de atuação implicou no acompanhamento das práticas de produção, comercialização, eventos de divulgação dos segmentos e lançamentos de coleções, tanto das joias produzidas por designers de joias, quanto das joias produzidas por artistas joalheiros. A construção teórica da pesquisa objetivou abarcar o ponto de vista do sujeito e seu contexto, além da agência do objeto resultante da formação de coletivos produtores de joias. O estudo também abarcou a reflexão sobre corpo artefatual, não só em referência a um corpo fabricado, mas no intuito de entender o corpo como feito por artefatos. Neste sentido, a obra de Bruno Latour serviu como ferramenta para se pensar o corpo como constitutivamente sendo feito a partir da composição dos atores humano e atores não-humanos. Assim, um dos aspectos que se discute são as redes entre sujeitos e seus objetos. Como resultados, observamos que os joalheiros, por se situarem entre os dois campos de práticas, parecem se encontrar em um espaço liminar. De um lado, afirmam que o que os diferenciam das outras formas de produzir joalheria é a exploração ou experimentação do objeto associado ao corpo, o qual é dotado de intencionalidade, ao manifestar o pensamento de quem o fez. De outro lado, têm-se os produtores que se identificam com o campo do design, para quem todos os aspectos do comércio joalheiro devem estar cuidadosamente em consonância com a proposta do produto.
The purpose of the study was to compare two ways to make jewelry, one closer of art paradigms and the other with a more commercial bias to thus understand the processes that affect the way producers of the two categories act. In this sense, the objective of the research was to identify under what circumstances jewelry is considered art for being a category targeted on production of more experimental works, which may be intended to problematize the body ornamentation or the jewelry language or, otherwise, in which context is understood as a result of an activity design process, adopting, however, the jewelry assumptions to meet the market. From a methodological point of view, distinguishing the characteristics of products generated by the influence of the two fields of activity, involved the monitoring of production practices, marketing, dissemination events of the segments and collections launches of both the jewelry produced by jewelry designers, as the jewelry produced by artists jewelers. The theoretical construction of the research aimed to encompass the subject's point of view and its context, in addition to the object's agency resulting of the formation of jewelry producers collectives. The study also encompassed reflection on artifactual body, not only in reference to a manufactured body, but in order to understand the body as made by artifacts. n this sense, the work of Bruno Latour served as a tool for thinking about the body as constitutively made from the composition of human actors and non-human actors. Thus, one of the aspects discussed are the networks between subjects and their objects. As results, we noticed that jewelers, because they are located between the two camps practices, seem to find themselves in a liminal space. On one hand, they claim that what differentiate them from other forms of producing jewelry is the exploration or experimentation of the object associated with the body, which is endowed with intentionality, to express the thought of who did it. On the other hand, there are the producers who identify themselves with the design field, for whom all aspects of the jewelry trade must be carefully in line with the proposal of the product.
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Freese, Lauren N. "Corporate Apprenticeships in Design Research: Interdisciplinary Learning Practices of an Emergent Profession." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1535465775968169.
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Tonolli, Linda. "Designing for the Common in precarious contexts. Notes from a Feminist perspective." Doctoral thesis, Università degli studi di Trento, 2018. https://hdl.handle.net/11572/368629.
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This work presents a Feminist approach to Participatory Design focusing on provoking and subverting hegemonic narratives. Through Design Anthropology projects in the field of Active Aging, I aim at defining design tactics for making the Common visible.
The system design literature on Active Aging presents aging as a problem that needs to be fixed and it attributes to older adults aging negative stereotypes, promoting in this way ageism. This narrative is influenced by, as it informs, the EU policies that fund projects on the design of assistive technologies through a rhetoric of compassion towards those considered older people. At date, critical interdisciplinary approaches consider the concept of aging in modern societies as a bio-product of capitalism, since it is related to the end of a person’s work life and therefore the end of her/his productive capacity. My thesis is positioned at the intersection between critical approaches and community-based Participatory Design, considering design as one of the practices for raising awareness and taking care of the common. The Common is the ensemble of material and immaterial resources that allow people to be tied together and it can be looked at in a positive and liberating way, in contrast with hegemonic and normative constraints, as the implications of active aging narrative. In my view Participatory Design is one of the approaches to subvert and rebalance power-relations, and for this reason I adopted it in my work.
Therefore, the leading research question is: How can we learn to recognize the Common through a Participatory Design process?
To answer this research question, Participatory Design is informed by Design Anthropology and Feminism. The former restitues the importance of anthropological reflexivity in the encounter with the Otherness and the in-depth empirical work of field-work. The latter provides an intersectional lens that offers the decisive lever to shift the focus from the homogeneous fictional image of the ``older person’’, to the rich heterogeneity of human beings, that includes not just the age identity, but multiple identity layers (gender, ethnicity, economy, education...). This shift of focus has been done mainly through the deconstruction of negative aging stereotypes (ageism), predominant in the institutional narratives of Active Aging, whether they are in the policies, in system design literature or in people’s everyday life. In this way the shift of focus highlights the passage from the Active Aging perspective to the Common one, and from the user to the participants towards a collective dimension in which aging becomes a secondary element in favour of the Common, as relational quality and ability to cooperate and self-organize.
For this reason the case studies presented are situated in community-based organizations of - in institutional terms - older adults. The case studies are settled in three different contexts and with different design ideas, as they emerge from ethnographic fieldwork: working on public mobility in a grassroot movement of seniors and pensioners in a mountain community; sharing knowledge and competencies in an annual laboratory on digital technologies promoted by a social cooperative and organized by the university; improving communication and making compost in top-down senior social gardens, organized by senior social clubs and promoted by the local municipality.
The case studies presented are situated in precarious contexts, that is, in which the available resources are scarce, there is little or not institutional safety net and the only way for the design researcher (myself) to set a project is through building informal and trustful relationships with the participants, nurturing attachments and managing stereotypes that the participants may have about her.
The main contribution of my work is having elaborated guidelines that include relational movements and design tactics to reframe hegemonic design contexts and empowering people that are involved in, to re-imagining themselves from users to participants and to be entitled and responsible to design their own technologies in their own means, to strengthen the Common that ties them together. The design processes that me and the communities realized are constituted by the relational movements of exploration, provocation, conflict, reflexivity and appropriation.
In contemporary times, where the Common is often dispossessed and converted to a product, and we are called to fight capitalistic forces to maintain the capacity of cooperate, the Common is often not evident in our everyday life. From my empirical work I elaborated three design tactics that can inform design projects that aim at making the Common visible, and these are: decolonizing hegemonic narratives, nurturing attachments with the people we designers work with, and creating contextual ethics to help us making decisions when encountering conflicts between ours and participants’ agendas.
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Tonolli, Linda. "Designing for the Common in precarious contexts. Notes from a Feminist perspective." Doctoral thesis, Università degli studi di Trento, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/11572/266910.
Full textAbstract:
This work presents a Feminist approach to Participatory Design focusing on provoking and subverting hegemonic narratives. Through Design Anthropology projects in the field of Active Aging, I aim at defining design tactics for making the Common visible. The system design literature on Active Aging presents aging as a problem that needs to be fixed and it attributes to older adults aging negative stereotypes, promoting in this way ageism. This narrative is influenced by, as it informs, the EU policies that fund projects on the design of assistive technologies through a rhetoric of compassion towards those considered older people. At date, critical interdisciplinary approaches consider the concept of aging in modern societies as a bio-product of capitalism, since it is related to the end of a person’s work life and therefore the end of her/his productive capacity. My thesis is positioned at the intersection between critical approaches and community-based Participatory Design, considering design as one of the practices for raising awareness and taking care of the common. The Common is the ensemble of material and immaterial resources that allow people to be tied together and it can be looked at in a positive and liberating way, in contrast with hegemonic and normative constraints, as the implications of active aging narrative. In my view Participatory Design is one of the approaches to subvert and rebalance power-relations, and for this reason I adopted it in my work. Therefore, the leading research question is: How can we learn to recognize the Common through a Participatory Design process? To answer this research question, Participatory Design is informed by Design Anthropology and Feminism. The former restitues the importance of anthropological reflexivity in the encounter with the Otherness and the in-depth empirical work of field-work. The latter provides an intersectional lens that offers the decisive lever to shift the focus from the homogeneous fictional image of the ``older person’’, to the rich heterogeneity of human beings, that includes not just the age identity, but multiple identity layers (gender, ethnicity, economy, education...). This shift of focus has been done mainly through the deconstruction of negative aging stereotypes (ageism), predominant in the institutional narratives of Active Aging, whether they are in the policies, in system design literature or in people’s everyday life. In this way the shift of focus highlights the passage from the Active Aging perspective to the Common one, and from the user to the participants towards a collective dimension in which aging becomes a secondary element in favour of the Common, as relational quality and ability to cooperate and self-organize. For this reason the case studies presented are situated in community-based organizations of - in institutional terms - older adults. The case studies are settled in three different contexts and with different design ideas, as they emerge from ethnographic fieldwork: working on public mobility in a grassroot movement of seniors and pensioners in a mountain community; sharing knowledge and competencies in an annual laboratory on digital technologies promoted by a social cooperative and organized by the university; improving communication and making compost in top-down senior social gardens, organized by senior social clubs and promoted by the local municipality. The case studies presented are situated in precarious contexts, that is, in which the available resources are scarce, there is little or not institutional safety net and the only way for the design researcher (myself) to set a project is through building informal and trustful relationships with the participants, nurturing attachments and managing stereotypes that the participants may have about her. The main contribution of my work is having elaborated guidelines that include relational movements and design tactics to reframe hegemonic design contexts and empowering people that are involved in, to re-imagining themselves from users to participants and to be entitled and responsible to design their own technologies in their own means, to strengthen the Common that ties them together. The design processes that me and the communities realized are constituted by the relational movements of exploration, provocation, conflict, reflexivity and appropriation. In contemporary times, where the Common is often dispossessed and converted to a product, and we are called to fight capitalistic forces to maintain the capacity of cooperate, the Common is often not evident in our everyday life. From my empirical work I elaborated three design tactics that can inform design projects that aim at making the Common visible, and these are: decolonizing hegemonic narratives, nurturing attachments with the people we designers work with, and creating contextual ethics to help us making decisions when encountering conflicts between ours and participants’ agendas.
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Tonolli, Linda. "Designing for the Common in precarious contexts. Notes from a Feminist perspective." Doctoral thesis, Università degli studi di Trento, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/11572/266910.
Full textAbstract:
This work presents a Feminist approach to Participatory Design focusing on provoking and subverting hegemonic narratives. Through Design Anthropology projects in the field of Active Aging, I aim at defining design tactics for making the Common visible. The system design literature on Active Aging presents aging as a problem that needs to be fixed and it attributes to older adults aging negative stereotypes, promoting in this way ageism. This narrative is influenced by, as it informs, the EU policies that fund projects on the design of assistive technologies through a rhetoric of compassion towards those considered older people. At date, critical interdisciplinary approaches consider the concept of aging in modern societies as a bio-product of capitalism, since it is related to the end of a person’s work life and therefore the end of her/his productive capacity. My thesis is positioned at the intersection between critical approaches and community-based Participatory Design, considering design as one of the practices for raising awareness and taking care of the common. The Common is the ensemble of material and immaterial resources that allow people to be tied together and it can be looked at in a positive and liberating way, in contrast with hegemonic and normative constraints, as the implications of active aging narrative. In my view Participatory Design is one of the approaches to subvert and rebalance power-relations, and for this reason I adopted it in my work. Therefore, the leading research question is: How can we learn to recognize the Common through a Participatory Design process? To answer this research question, Participatory Design is informed by Design Anthropology and Feminism. The former restitues the importance of anthropological reflexivity in the encounter with the Otherness and the in-depth empirical work of field-work. The latter provides an intersectional lens that offers the decisive lever to shift the focus from the homogeneous fictional image of the ``older person’’, to the rich heterogeneity of human beings, that includes not just the age identity, but multiple identity layers (gender, ethnicity, economy, education...). This shift of focus has been done mainly through the deconstruction of negative aging stereotypes (ageism), predominant in the institutional narratives of Active Aging, whether they are in the policies, in system design literature or in people’s everyday life. In this way the shift of focus highlights the passage from the Active Aging perspective to the Common one, and from the user to the participants towards a collective dimension in which aging becomes a secondary element in favour of the Common, as relational quality and ability to cooperate and self-organize. For this reason the case studies presented are situated in community-based organizations of - in institutional terms - older adults. The case studies are settled in three different contexts and with different design ideas, as they emerge from ethnographic fieldwork: working on public mobility in a grassroot movement of seniors and pensioners in a mountain community; sharing knowledge and competencies in an annual laboratory on digital technologies promoted by a social cooperative and organized by the university; improving communication and making compost in top-down senior social gardens, organized by senior social clubs and promoted by the local municipality. The case studies presented are situated in precarious contexts, that is, in which the available resources are scarce, there is little or not institutional safety net and the only way for the design researcher (myself) to set a project is through building informal and trustful relationships with the participants, nurturing attachments and managing stereotypes that the participants may have about her. The main contribution of my work is having elaborated guidelines that include relational movements and design tactics to reframe hegemonic design contexts and empowering people that are involved in, to re-imagining themselves from users to participants and to be entitled and responsible to design their own technologies in their own means, to strengthen the Common that ties them together. The design processes that me and the communities realized are constituted by the relational movements of exploration, provocation, conflict, reflexivity and appropriation. In contemporary times, where the Common is often dispossessed and converted to a product, and we are called to fight capitalistic forces to maintain the capacity of cooperate, the Common is often not evident in our everyday life. From my empirical work I elaborated three design tactics that can inform design projects that aim at making the Common visible, and these are: decolonizing hegemonic narratives, nurturing attachments with the people we designers work with, and creating contextual ethics to help us making decisions when encountering conflicts between ours and participants’ agendas.
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Hebert, Marc K. ""People...Do Not Come with Standardized Circumstances": Toward A Model for an Anthropology of E-Government." Scholar Commons, 2012. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/4332.
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Many Americans appreciate the availability and ease of using government websites to conduct their business with the state. What then of the most vulnerable in society? How do they access and use a standardized application process for government assistance, considering their potential resource, educational and physical constraints? Many go to public libraries and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which shifts the responsibility to help applicants from the government agency administering the program to local actors whose primary duties lie elsewhere.
The aim of this research is to document the experiences of three groups of people, primarily located in a central Florida, urban environment, who interact with an electronic government (e-government) program known as "ACCESS." This program is an online application for lower-income Floridians seeking food, medical and temporary cash assistance. ACCESS is part of the growth in e-government where public information and services are placed online.
The first group of stakeholders in this research is the applicants themselves who frequent public libraries and NGOs, seeking technological access and assistance with the ACCESS program. The second group is the employees at these locations who provide varying levels of support to the applicants. Finally, there are the employees of the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) who created and continue to manage the program.
The formal research process involved ethnographic methods spread over 16 months, including participant-observation, semi-structured interviews, free listing and think alouds with the applicants and those who help them at libraries and NGOs. No DCF employee agreed to participate in the research, leading to a reliance on reports either produced by DCF, or shared with them by other government agencies about the ACCESS program. The data from the above methods were used to construct a survey, administered to a largely different group of ACCESS applicants and employees at the same public libraries and NGOs.
The interpretation of findings was informed by the anthropological literature on U.S. poverty studies and public policy as well as the disciplines of e-government and design. The findings produced a model for analyzing e-government anthropologically. The model arose to fill several gaps in the literature. First, little work in U.S. anthropology deals with e-government and e-governance. Second, triangulation through ethnographic methods is not widespread within e-government research. Finally, the model demonstrates that the "audit culture" or evaluative norms and assumed ideologies of assessing e-government can shape program design, maintenance, and ultimately the experiences of users or citizens. The model is instructive and emergent, intended as a strategy to encourage further research about e-government.
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Hinks, Stephen. "A Structural and Functional Analysis of Eighteenth Century Buttons." W&M ScholarWorks, 1988. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625441.
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Shlasko, Ellen. "Delftware Chronology: A New Approach to Dating English Tin-Glazed Ceramics." W&M ScholarWorks, 1989. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625501.
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Artz, Matthew. "An Ethnography of Direct-to-Consumer Genomics [DTCG]: Design Anthropology Insights for the Product Management of a Disruptive Innovation." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2018. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1248393/.
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Direct-to-consumer genomics (DTCG) health testing offers great promise to humanity, however to date adoption has lagged as a result of consumer awareness, understanding, and previous government regulations restricting DTCG companies from providing information on an individual's genetic predispositions. But in 2017 the broader DTCG market which also includes genealogical testing demonstrated exponential growth, implying that DTCG is starting to diffuse as an innovation. To better understand the sociocultural forces affecting diffusion, adoption, and satisfaction, qualitative ethnographic research was conducted with DTCG genealogy and health consumers. The data was qualitatively analyzed using thematic analysis to understand the similarities and differences in beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and mediating factors that have influenced consumers. Design anthropology theory and methods were used to produce ethnographically informed insights. The insights were then translated into actionable product management and business strategy recommendations.
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Mazzarella, Francesco. "Crafting situated services : meaningful design for social innovation with textile artisan communities." Thesis, Loughborough University, 2018. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/33528.
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The mainstream ecosystem has proven unsustainable in terms of livelihood, environmental stewardship, cultural heritage, and social equality. To alleviate these problems, a range of top-down strategies has been deployed, but they are often ineffective in addressing the specific needs and aspirations of diverse contexts. On the other hand, bottom-up initiatives started by communities also face organisational and resource limitations that prevent them from becoming resilient. Within this context, service design for social innovation has become a well-established human-centred, strategic and systemic approach to tackling such challenges. However, designers have put much emphasis on the use of fixed toolkits that result in one-size-fits-all outputs. Instead, this thesis argues for a more situated and embedded approach to service design. With this in mind, the aim of the research was to explore new roles, purposes and methods the service designer can adopt to activate communities to transition towards a more sustainable future. For this purpose, participatory case studies were undertaken with two textile artisan communities (in Nottingham, UK, and Cape Town, South Africa), chosen as relevant cases of design, production and consumption. As a result of both cases, the designer activated the artisans, previously working in an isolated and precarious condition, to become a community and outline a situated service proposition that embeds a shared vision for a sustainable future. Building on emerging anthropological approaches to service design, the thesis contributes an original methodological framework, which equips the service designer with cultural sensibility when entering communities, aiding in making sense of sustainable futures, facilitating the co-design of situated services and activating local legacies. In this, the investigation evidenced the diverse roles - cultural insider, storyteller, sensemaker, facilitator, and activist - the service designer can play throughout a social innovation process. Furthermore, the thesis emphasised that the mastery of the designer lies in the skill of tailoring his/her approach to specific contexts in order to craft situated services that are meaningful to the communities using them.
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Fang, Zihan 1962. "Chinese city parks: Political, economic and social influences on design (1949-1994)." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/278614.
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This thesis is an attempt to understand the purposes of modern Chinese park design. The goal of this work was to identify the social, economic, and political factors influencing contemporary park design. The primary approach was analysis of case studies. By analyzing characteristics of parks constructed at different stages in urban park history and in the cultural history of China, the results provide strong support for important political, economic, and social influences on park design.
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McLaughlin, Logan M. "Understanding Road Use and Road User Interaction: An Exploratory Ethnographic Study Toward the Design of Autonomous Vehicles." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2016. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc849632/.
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This thesis contributes to research that informs the design of autonomous vehicles (AVs). It examines interactions among various types of road users, such as pedestrians and drivers, and describes how findings can contribute to the design of AVs. The work was undertaken as part of a research internship at Nissan Research Center-Silicon Valley on the Human Understanding in Design team. Methods included video ethnography “travel-alongs” which captured the experience of travel from the point of view of drivers and pedestrians, analysis of interaction patterns taken from video of intersections, and analysis of road laws. Findings address the implications of what it will mean for AVs to exist as social entities in a world of varied road contexts, and how AVs might navigate the social act of driving on roads they share with a variety of human users. This thesis contributes to an emerging body of research and application on the subject of the AV in the world.
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Pearce, Celia. "Playing ethnography : a study of emergent behaviour in online games and virtual worlds." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2006. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/2300/.
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This study concerns itself with the relationship between game design and emergent social behaviour in massively multiplayer online games and virtual worlds. This thesis argues for a legitimisation of the study of ‘communities of play’, alongside communities perceived as more ‘serious’, such as communities of interest or practice. It also identifies six factors that contribute to emergent social behaviour and investigates the relationship between group and individual identity, and the emergent ways in which these arise from and intersect with the features and mechanics of the game worlds themselves. Methodology: Under the rubric of ‘design research’, this study was conducted as an ethnographic intervention, an anthropological investigation that deliberately privileged the online experience whilst acknowledging the performative nature of both game play and the research process itself. The research was informed by years of professional practical experience in game design and playtesting, as well as by qualitative methods derived from the fields of Anthropology, Sociology, Computermediated Communications and the emerging field of Game Studies. The process of conducting the eighteen-month ethnographic study followed the progress of a sub-set of members of the ‘Uru Diaspora,’ a group of 10,000 players who were made refugees when the massively multiplayer game ‘Uru: Ages Beyond Myst’ was closed in February of 2004. Uru refugees immigrated into other virtual worlds, using their features and capabilities to create ethnic communities that emulated the culture, artefacts and environments of the original Uru world. Over time, players developed ‘hybrid’ cultures, integrating the Uru culture with that of their new homes, and eventually creating entirely new Uru and Myst-inspired content. The outcome is the identification of six factors that serve as ‘engines for emergence’ and discusses their relationship to each other, to game design, and to emergent behaviour. These include: • Play Ecosystems: Fixed-Synthetic vs. Co-Created Worlds: Online games and virtual worlds exist along a spectrum, with environments entirely authored by the designer at one end, and those comprised primarily of player-created content and assets on the other, with a range of variations between. The type of world will impact the sort of emergent behaviour that occurs, and worlds that include player-created content will be more inclined to promote emergent behaviour. • Communities of Play: Distributed groups formed around play demonstrate distinct characteristics based on shared values and play styles. The study describes in detail one such play community, and analyses the ways in which its characteristic play styles drove its emergent behaviours. • The Social Construction of Avatar Identity: Individual avatar identity is constructed through an emergent process engaging social feedback. • Intersubjective Flow: A social reading of the psychological notion of ‘flow’ that describes the way in which flow dynamics occur in a social context through play. • Productive Play: Countering the traditional contention that play is inherently ‘unproductive’ as some scholars suggest, the thesis argues that play can be seen as a form of cultural production, as well as fulcrum for creative activity. • Porous Magic Circles and the ‘Ludisphere’: The magic circle, which bounds play activities, is more porous than game scholars had previously believed. The term ‘ludisphere' is used to describe the larger context of aggregated play space via the Internet. Also identified are leakages between ‘virtual worlds’ and ‘real life’. By identifying these factors and attempting to trace their roots in game design, the study aims to contribute a new approach to the making and analysis of user experience and creativity ‘in game’. The thesis posits that by achieving a deeper cultural understanding of the relationship between design and emergent behaviour, it is possible to make steps forward in the study of ‘emergence’ itself as a design material.
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Garcia, Steven R. "Understanding Affluence through the Lens of Technology: An Ethnographic Study toward Building an Anthropology Practice in Advertising." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2017. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1062859/.
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This thesis describes a pilot study for a new cultural anthropology initiative at Team One, a US-based premium and luxury brand advertising agency. In this study, I explore the role and meaning of technology among a population of affluent individuals in Southern California through diaries and ethnographic interviews conducted in their homes. Using schema theory and design anthropology to inform my theoretical approach, I discuss socioeconomic and cultural factors that shape these participants' notions of affluence and influence their presentation of self through an examination of their technology and proudest possessions. I put forward a theory of conspicuous achievement as a way to describe how the affluent use technology to espouse a merit-based model of affluence. Through this model of affluence, participants strive to align themselves to the virtuous middle-class while ascribing moral value to their consumption practices. Lastly, I provide a typology of meaningful technology artifacts in the affluent home that describes the roles of their most used tech devices and how each type supports conspicuous achievement.
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Taft, Ann. "At the Spiritual Grassroots: An Analysis of Visionary Art & Artists." TopSCHOLAR®, 1986. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/2896.
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In this thesis I focus on an art form alternately described as "naive," "visionary," "environmental," "singular," "individual," or "grassroots." Not easily placed within established academic or popular art categories, such art usually lands by default in the folk art pile and is quickly cast to the peripheries of that genre. In this thesis, I am not concerned with inventing another label for these artists and their work. Instead, I explore the possibility that visionary art may be a separate genre, but one to which folklore analysis may usefully be brought to bear.
Chapter One is a historical and bibliographical analysis of visionary art. Beginning with an overview of the literature on the subject, I review the development of the definitional debate in the United States as well as in Europe and trace the gradual evolution of this art form into a loosely separate category.
Chapter Two consists of an analysis of visionary art. I construct a "behaviorist" model which draws not only upon the usual criteria of building styles or materials used but also examines such subjects as the artist's motivations, personal visions, life history and community role.
In Chapter Three I test this model using the work of Valenty Zaharek, an Arizona woodcarver and ceramicist. Zaharek's previously undocumented work, "Pecos West," is a three-dimensional carved depiction of Western scenes. It is aesthetically magnificent and falls along the borders of a variety of art forms --folk, visionary, popular.
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Karlsson, Hanna. "Styrd tid är stulen tid, kontrollerad tid är fri tid : Om fyra kvinnors syn på tid och hur den används." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för kultur och kommunikation, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-97712.
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Syftet med denna uppsats är att studera fyra kvinnors syn på tid, struktur och kreativitet på servicedesignbyrån Transformator design. Genom intervjuer och deltagande observation undersöker jag hur tid, struktur och kreativitet samspelar för mina informanter, och hur de använder tiden. Slutsatsen av denna studie är i korthet att kontrollen av tid är viktig för upplevelsen av tid. Strukturer, synliga och osynliga, är centrala för att se och förstå tiden och upprätthålla kontrollen av tid. Informanternas strävan är att skapa fylld tid, som är värdefull tid, och genom kontroll av tiden skapa en positiv känsla av att ha tid. Det är då kreativiteten släpps fri.The purpose of this thesis is to study four women's view of time, structure and creativity at the service design agency Transformer design. Through interviews and participant observation, I examine how time, structure and creativity interact for them, and how they use time. The conclusion of this study is in brief that the control of time is important to the experience of time. Structure, visible and invisible, is central to see and understand time and maintain control of the time. The informant's aim to create filled time, which is valuable time, and by controlling time they create a positive sense of having time. That's when creativity is released.
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Pang, Natalie Lee-San, Donald Schauder, Marian Quartly, and Liza Dale-Hallett. "User-centred design, e-research, and adaptive capacity in cultural institutions: The case of the Women on Farms Gathering collection." School of Communication & Information, Nanyang Technological University, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/105190.
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This paper explores how the interaction between community members, researchers and cultural institutions can be leveraged to produce improved results for all through the interplay of user-centred design (UCD) and participative action research informed by structuration theory. We discuss through a case study of a Women on Farms Gathering (WoFG) collection in Victoria, our vision of UCD, the potential of using ICT to facilitate e-research, and the reflexive adaptation of cultural institutions.
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Fannin, Nicole M. "bahay sa buhay [from house to life]: exploring architecture's role in informal settlement in Payatas, Philippines." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1276952543.
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Atkins, Ashley. "Pamunkey Pottery and Cultural Persistence." W&M ScholarWorks, 2009. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626585.
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Ylipulli, J. (Johanna). "Smart futures meet northern realities: anthropological perspectives on the design and adoption of urban computing." Doctoral thesis, Oulun yliopisto, 2015. http://urn.fi/urn:isbn:9789526207483.
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Abstract This thesis explores the sociocultural processes shaping the design, adoption and use of new urban technology in the city of Oulu in northern Finland. The exploration is conducted at experiential level focusing on people’s personal perspectives which allows uncovering underlying cultural meanings, social structures and historically formed practices and discourses. The unique case for the thesis is provided by the recent technological development in Oulu that has been shaped by agendas such as ubiquitous computing and smart cities. The thesis first investigates in-depth the design process of the new urban technology, and also compares the visions of the designers and decision-makers with the practices and perspectives of the city inhabitants. Then, the adoption process of public urban technologies is studied in detail by constructing a conceptual appropriation model. Finally, the effects of the northern location of Oulu on the design and use of the urban technology are scrutinized. The research is based on empirical, qualitative research materials comparing the experiences of young adult and elderly city inhabitants; in addition, quantitative use data of urban technologies is utilized to provide an overview on the use trends. The key findings indicate that the design and decisions concerning novel technologies and the outcome are shaped by complex sociomaterial practices based on experiences from previous similar projects, and on certain preconceptions about the city inhabitants and technology’s role in the cityscape. Different people have differing power positions in relation to the development of the urban public places, and technology implementation can marginalize some segments of city inhabitants. Further, the adoption of novel urban technologies is found to depend heavily on the norms of public places and people’s long-term experiences of technology use. Finally, climate, ICT use and sociocultural context are shown to be profoundly interconnected, and thus, urban computing design must reconsider the situatedness of technology. These findings call for further sociocultural studies on future smart citiesTiivistelmä Väitöskirja tarkastelee sosiokulttuurisia tekijöitä, jotka ovat vaikuttaneet uuden kaupunkiteknologian suunnitteluun, omaksumiseen ja käyttöön Pohjois-Suomessa Oulussa. Tutkimus keskittyy ihmisten kokemukselliseen tasoon, jonka kautta on mahdollista hahmottaa kulttuurisia merkityksiä, sosiaalisia rakenteita sekä historiallisesti muotoutuneita käytäntöjä ja diskursseja. Tutkimuksen taustalla on Oulun viime vuosien teknologinen kehitys, joka osaltaan perustuu visioihin älykaupungista ja kaupunkitilaan sulautetusta jokapaikan tietotekniikasta. Tutkimus tarkastelee aluksi uuden kaupunkiteknologian suunnitteluprosessia, ja peilaa lisäksi suunnittelijoiden ja päättäjien visioita kaupunkilaisten käytäntöihin ja näkökulmiin. Seuraavaksi julkisten kaupunkiteknologioiden käyttöönottoa jäljitetään rakentamalla malli, joka kuvaa omaksumisprosesseja. Lopuksi selvitetään Oulun pohjoisen sijainnin vaikutusta teknologian suunnitteluun ja käyttöön. Tutkimus perustuu empiirisiin, laadullisiin tutkimusaineistoihin, joiden avulla tutkitaan ja vertaillaan nuorten aikuisten ja ikääntyneiden kaupunkilaisten kokemuksia. Lisäksi käytetään määrällistä aineistoa kuvaamaan kaupunkiteknologioiden käytön kehityssuuntia. Väitöskirjan mukaan kaupunkiteknologioita koskevat päätökset ja lopputulos ovat monimutkaisten sosiaalis-materiaalisten käytäntöjen muovaavia. Käytäntöjen taustalla ovat kokemukset samankaltaisista projekteista sekä ennakkokäsitykset kaupunkilaisista ja teknologian roolista kaupunkitilassa. Tutkimus valottaa ihmisten erilaisia valta-asemia kaupunkien kehityksessä ja tuo esiin, miten teknologia voi marginalisoida joitakin ihmisryhmiä. Tutkimus osoittaa, miten julkisten paikkojen normit ja pitkän ajan kuluessa muovautuneet teknologiakokemukset vaikuttavat uusien kaupunkiteknologioiden omaksumiseen. Lisäksi todetaan ilmaston, tieto- ja viestintätekniikan käytön ja sosiokulttuurisen kontekstin vahva yhteys, jonka vuoksi alan tutkimuksen tulisi arvioida uudelleen teknologian paikkasidonnaisuutta. Tulokset osoittavat, että sosiokulttuurista tutkimusta älykaupungeista tarvitaan lisää
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Bongiorno, Thomas Michael. "Dreams lost to capital : a social and cultural history of an artisan's community, San Francisco Bay Area, 1967--2005 /." [Bloomington] : Indiana University, 2007. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3264309.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Folklore, 2007.Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-05, Section: A, page: 2108. Adviser: Beverly Stoeltje. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed Jan. 9, 2008)".
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Notarnicola, Cathy. "Woven lives, weavers' voices: A family of Dine weaversspeak about Dine textiles." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/278772.
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This research documents and discusses the reactions of a family of Dine (Navajo) weavers who were asked to examine selected Dine textiles in the Arizona State Museum's collection. Although the ways Dine weavers perceive their creations is not the focus of many studies, this research explores their aesthetics to gain a greater understanding of the weaving tradition. Building on cross-cultural interviewing techniques that originally used photographs, this study uses a selection of museum textiles to explore Dine aesthetics. The results address Dine weavers' views of the meanings and changes in Dine textile designs, the significance of the process of weaving, and the motivational forces that fuel this tradition.
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Valencia-Tobon, Alejandro. "Your love hurts down to my bones : exploring public understandings of dengue fever in Medellin, Colombia, through an anthropology-art-science investigation." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2016. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/your-love-hurts-down-to-my-bones-exploring-public-understandings-of-dengue-fever-in-medellin-colombia-through-an-anthropologyartscience-investigation(d3f04ff7-a8e5-47c6-ac80-d8bb54d346c8).html.
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This is a study of the creation and negotiation of different forms of knowledge about dengue fever. I explore how anthropology, in collaboration with ideas and practices drawn from science and art, may transform public understandings of dengue. Dengue is a vector-borne disease transmitted to humans by the bite of a mosquito which is infected with the dengue virus. Mosquito-borne diseases have normally been treated through vector control and the elimination of breeding sites. Until 1960, the use of the pesticide DDT allowed the virtual eradication of Aedes aegypti (Ae. aegypti) in many places of the world. DDT was banned in most of the world by 1970 and by 1980 the focus on vector-control was replaced by a discourse of sanitation, in which health authorities tried to ‘educate’ populations and ‘teach’ proper hygienic habits to avoid mosquito-human contact. At present, these practices are changing again. The World Health Organisation (WHO) suggests that dengue incidence could be reduced at least 50% by 2020 through applying health campaigns and social interventions that involve having people participating in the control of dengue outbreaks. In this thesis I explore how WHO guidelines are applied in the control of dengue in Medellín, and how we can think about the concepts of ‘knowledge’, ‘education’ and public health campaigns through ethnographic methods. My project has been about looking at how different understandings – or different forms of knowledge – are part of interactions of different ‘publics’, non-expert citizens, virologists, entomologists and artists. My argument is that health campaigns should be re-designed – privileging relations and stimulating debate – by focusing on experience and moving towards managing the disease and living with the mosquito. Contrary to the different models enacted in health campaigns – which neglect the value of everyday experiences – I advocate for interdisciplinary collaboration as a relational art strategy that can generate an intersubjective exchange of experiences.
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Prempeh, James Agyeman. "Dynamic Culture-Centered Design for User Empowerment, with Applications to Techno-Culture in Ghana." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1315947637.
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Young, Joseph Jr. "Allegiance by Design: Visual Identities in Reference to Political Ideology and Brand Loyalty." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1626257876186202.
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Hester, ElizaBeth. "Vadie Williams, Folk Artist: Drawnwork as a Reflection of Personal Identity in Rural Kentucky." TopSCHOLAR®, 1989. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/2491.
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This study focuses on Vadie Conner Williams, an individual folk artist, and the drawnwork she has created throughout her lifetime. Included is a description of her rural farm background, her needlework skills and her creative process. The study also examines the significance of drawnwork to Williams and determines how she has adapted her work to satisfy her personal needs as well as the needs of her customers. Based on tape recorded interviews and a close examination of her work, the study concludes that drawnwork is an integral part of Williams's everyday life; it is an indicator of her beliefs and a source of identity within her community.
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Johnstone, Sarah. "Enhancing ecologies of care for CALD women through care-full creative engagement." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2021. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/213223/1/Sarah_Johnstone_Thesis.pdf.
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Settlement conditions in Australia for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) women are challenging. Despite an abundance of social services within the multicultural city of Logan, CALD women experience several social issues that impact their wellbeing. This study explores a creative engagement methodology to foster social connection and ecologies of care for CALD women. Findings reveal that the ecology of care in Logan is complex, hierarchical, fragmented, and difficult to navigate. The study, involving a series of creative interventions, demonstrates the potential benefits for creative engagement to enhance individual ecologies of care, and provides direction for designing more inclusive engagement practices.
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Du, Toit Jacques Louis. "A typology of designs for social research in the built environment." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/5142.
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Thesis (PhD (Sociology and Social Anthropology))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The aim of this metamethodological study was to construct a typology of designs for social research in the built environment, i.e., architecture, urban design and planning. Currently there is no such typology, while the notion of “research design” is relatively unknown in methodological literature in the built environment field. An outline of the dimensions of social research provided a theoretical lens for methodological analysis, and identified six methodological considerations as classification criteria, including (1) research context, (2) research aim, (3) research purpose, (4) methodological paradigm, (5) methodological approach, and (6) source of data. Exploratory interviews and a survey and methodological content analysis of built environment theses provided a better understanding of methodological issues in conducting social research in the built environment and the potential relevance of a typology of designs. A review of methodological literature identified 25 research design subtypes that can be clustered into 10 prototypical designs for inclusion in the typology, namely: (1) surveys, (2) experiments, (3) modelling, simulation, mapping and visualization, (4) textual and narrative studies, (5) field studies, (6) case studies, (7) intervention research, (8) evaluation research, (9) participatory action research, and (10) metaresearch. A survey and methodological content analysis of journal articles determined the extent to which these designs feature in social research in the built environment. Although all the designs and subtypes feature, metaresearch, case studies, evaluation research and surveys predominate. An initial typology classified the 10 prototypical designs in terms of the six methodological considerations. The typology was tested to see how well it classified the designs of actual studies and revised accordingly. Possible benefits of the typology include greater clarification, improved teaching and decision-making, and methodological reflection. Thus, the typology may support lecturers, students, supervisors, researchers, peer-reviewers and practitioners to have a more articulate, reflexive, and critical orientation with regard to research design to maximize the validity of findings and advance theory, methodology and practice in built environment disciplines. The study concludes that the typology may also mitigate post-modern criticisms against social research in the built environment.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die doel van hierdie metametodologiese studie was om `n tipologie van ontwerpe vir sosiale navorsing in die bou-omgewing (d.w.s. argitektuur, stadsontwerp en beplanning) te konstrueer. Tans is daar geen so tipologie nie, terwyl die nosie van “navorsingsontwerp” relatief onbekend is in metodologiese literatuur in die bou-omgewing veld. `n Uiteensetting van die dimensies van sosiale navorsing het `n teoretiese lens vir metodologiese analises verskaf en ses metodologiese konsiderasies as klassifikasie kriteria geïdentifiseer, insluitend (1) navorsingskonteks, (2) navorsingsoogmerk, (3) navorsingsdoelwit, (4) metodologiese paradigma, (5) metodologiese benadering, en (6) data bron. Verkennende onderhoude en `n opname en metodologiese inhoudsanalise van bou-omgewing tesisse het `n beter begrip van metodologiese kwessies in sosiale navorsing in die bou-omgewing en die moontlike relevansie van `n tipologie van ontwerpe verskaf. `n Oorsig van metodologiese literatuur het 25 navorsingsontwerp subtipes geïdentifiseer wat in 10 prototipe ontwerpe gegroepeer kan word vir insluiting in die tipologie, naamlik (1) opnames, (2) eksperimente, (3) modellering, simulasie, kartering en visualisering, (4) tekstuele en narratiewe studies, (5) veldstudies, (6) gevallestudies, (7) intervensie navorsing, (8) evaluasie navorsing, (9) deelnemende aksie navorsing, en (10) metanavorsing. `n Opname en metodologiese inhoudsanalise van joernaal artikels het die mate waartoe hierdie ontwerpe in sosiale navorsing in die bou-omgewing voorkom bepaal. Alhoewel al die ontwerpe en subtipes voorkom, is metanavorsing, gevallestudies, evaluasie navorsing en opnames predominant. `n Aanvanklike tipologie het die 10 prototipe ontwerpe in terme van die ses metodologiese konsiderasies geklassifiseer. Die tipologie is getoets om te sien hoe goed dit die ontwerpe van werklike studies klassifiseer en dienooreenkomstig gewysig. Moontlike voordele van die tipologie sluit in verbeterde klarifikasie, onderrig, besluitneming en metodologiese refleksie. Die tipologie kan dus dosente, studente, studieleiers, navorsers, beoordelaars en praktisyns ondersteun om `n meer geartikuleerde, refleksiewe en kritiese oriëntasie ten opsigte van navorsingsontwerp te hê om die geldigheid van bevindinge te maksimeer en teorie, metodologie en praktyk in bou-omgewing dissiplines te bevorder. Die studie kom tot die gevolgtrekking dat die tipologie ook postmoderne kritiek teen sosiale navorsing in die bou-omgewing kan mitigeer.
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Moodey, Meredith Campbell. "Ceramics from the Franklin Glassworks: Acquisition Patterns and Economic Stress." W&M ScholarWorks, 1988. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625438.
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Mamary, Albert James M. "African-American Influence on the Chesapeake Bay Log Canoe: Evidence from Nineteenth Century Probate Inventories and Population Census Records of York County, Virginia and Worcester County, Maryland." W&M ScholarWorks, 1994. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625862.
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Madsen, David andrew. "All Sorts of China Ware Large, Noble and Rich Chinese Bowls: Eighteenth-Century Chinese Export Porcelain in Virginia." W&M ScholarWorks, 1995. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625951.
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Roth, Heather S. "Exploratory User Research for a Website that Provides Resources for Educators of American Indian Students in Higher Education." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2016. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc955062/.
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Several studies have indicated that American Indian students in the United States higher education system confront unique challenges that derive from a legacy of colonialism and assimilationist policies (Huff 1997). Several scholars, American Indian and non-Native alike, have explored the effects of this history upon students in higher education (Brayboy 2004; Guillory and Wolverton 2008; Waterman and Lindley 2013). Very few, however, have explored the role of the educators of American Indian students, and most of the literature focuses on K-12 educational settings (McCarty and Lee 2014; Yong and Hoffman 2014). This thesis examines exploratory user research conducted to generate a foundational understanding of educators of American Indian students in higher education. Utilizing methods from design anthropology and user experience, semi-structured interviews and think-aloud sessions were conducted, almost exclusively virtually, for 17 participants. This research was conducted for a client, Fire & Associates, as part of the applied thesis process. Findings revealed a complex web of needs for educators of American Indian students in higher education related to teaching diverse students, the use of media and technology in the classroom, and the process of networking among other educators. The research culminated in content and design implications for the Fire & Associates website as well as suggestions for further research based on best practices in the field of user experience.
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Jacucci, G. (Giulio). "Interaction as performance:cases of configuring physical interfaces in mixed media." Doctoral thesis, University of Oulu, 2004. http://urn.fi/urn:isbn:9514276051.
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Mixed media, as artful assemblages of digital objects and physical artefacts, provide distinctive opportunities for experiential, presentational and representational interaction. In project-based learning of architecture design, participants staged spatial narratives with multiple projections, performed mixed objects and artefacts, and exploited bodily movements in mixed representations. These cases show how physical interfaces in mixed media acquire a spatial dimension, integrate physical artefacts and bodily movements and propose configurability as a central feature. A perspective based on anthropological concepts of performance makes it possible to address these aspects in a coherent way, pointing to sense experience, the individuality and collective emergence of expression and its diachronic and event-like character. From this perspective, interaction is part of expressive events aimed at generating new insights for participants (interchangeable performers and spectators) privileging sense experience. Events are the outcome of configurations of space, artefacts and digital media, and are characterised by a simultaneousness of doing and undergoing, of bodily presence and representation. More importantly, the performance perspective suggests a particular temporal view of interaction, based on the concept of event, addressing a neglected granularity of analysis between the moment-by-moment unfolding of interaction and the longer term co-evolution of technology and practice. Implications of interaction as performance contribute to a wider program of interaction design, thereby providing alternatives to established human-computer interaction tenets: the notion of event is an alternative to the notion of task; perception in Dewey's terms replaces recognition proposing expression as an alternative to accountability and usability. Implications include looking at how space can be configured and staged instead of measured or simulated, and how situations can be staged instead of sensed and recognised, privileging the sensing human over the sensing system.
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Pouponneau, Clément. "Analyse de l'activité de glaciéristes dans une perspective de conception de matériel de progression pour l'escalade et la montagne : contribution à l'élaboration d'un programme de recherche technologique en ergonomie du sport." Thesis, Dijon, 2015. http://www.theses.fr/2015DIJOL011/document.
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Cette thèse propose conjointement d’étudier l’activité de grimpeurs en escalade glacière tout en développant des perspectives pour la conception. Pour cela, elle s’appuie sur un programme de recherche empirique d’anthropologie cognitive énactif et un programme de recherche technologique ergonomique d’évaluation des situations d’appropriation. La première partie de ce travail s’attache à décrire la construction de « l’objet piolet » en faisant le lien entre innovation et pratique tout en déterminant la relation entre pratiquant et objet technique afin de construire les bases d’une « pensée de la technique » nécessaire à la constitution d’un programme de recherche technologique pour la conception. La deuxième partie poursuit une visée a) épistémique en produisant des connaissances sur le rôle de médiation joué par les piolets dans l’activité des glaciéristes, et b) transformative, en développant la situation d’appropriation comme objet de conception. Pour ce faire, nous mettons en avant a) l’utilisabilité des objets techniques (étude 1) puis b) l’appropriabilité de ces derniers (étude 2) pour ensuite c) mettre en oeuvre l’objet théorique cours d’in-formation en exploitant des données issues de l’activité soumise et non soumise à la conscience pré-réflexive pour documenter l’appropriation (étude 3). La troisième partie, quant à elle, poursuit une visée transformative et s’attarde à définir des critères pertinents pour développer le programme de recherche et enrichir la conceptionThe aim of the present thesis is twofold: first, it gives an overview onice climbers’ activity, based on an enactive empirical research program of cognitive anthropology, while developing a technological research program toevaluate appropriation situations and perspectives for design. The first part of this work focuses on the link between innovation and practice while identifying the relationship between the climbers and the technical object in order to build a technological research program focusing on the appropriation of objects. The second part is an epistemic work inculding two steps: a) to produce knowledge on the mediation role of ice axes for novice climbers and b) to develop design objects for the improvement of the research program. To this end, the usability of artifacts is highlighted (study 1) as well as the appropriability of artifacts (study 2) and then c) the theoretical object course of information is implemented using data from the activity subject and non-subject to pre-reflective consciousness to document the appropriation (study 3). The third section, however, seeks to bring about change and focuses to define the relevant criteria for the research program development and to improve the design
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Turner, Marianne. "The function, design and distribution of New Zealand adzes." Thesis, University of Auckland, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/26.
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The main objective of this thesis was to understand the function, design and distribution of New Zealand adzes, aspects little studied in Polynesia as a whole. Methodology involved functional and manufacturing replication experiments and comparisons of these results with statistics derived from the analysis of almost 12,000 archaeological adzes. Methodology was guided by technological organization theory which states that technological strategies reflect human behaviours and that artefacts like adzes are physical manifestations of the strategies employed by people to overcome problems posed by environmental and resource conditions. Variability in adze morphology was discovered to be the outcome of ongoing technological adjustments to a range of conditions that were constrained by a set of functionally defined parameters. The nature of the raw material, both for the adzes themselves and to make them, had a major influence on adze technology and morphology within these functional parameters. Four basic functional adze types were identified fi-om distinct and consistent combinations of design attributes not previously recognized explicitly in previous adze typologies. It was found that design attributes previously considered significant like crosssection shape and butt reduction were more heavily influenced by raw material quality than functional specifications. It was also important to recognize that form and function changed over time with use, and because adzes were so valuable due to manufacturing costs, they were intensively curated. The majority of archaeological specimens studied for this thesis had seen major morphological and functional change. This dynamic was included ,in a typology based on 'adze state7 as findings suggested (1) that extending adze use-life and optimizing reworking potential was incorporated in initial design strategies, (2) that intensive curation may have played a major role in changes in adze morphology over time, and (3). that it had a major influence on distribution and discard patterns in the archaeological record. Having identified these influences on adze discard and distribution, two complex production and distribution networks were observed for the North Island based around Tahanga basalt and Nelson~Marlborough argillite. Each was complimentary to the other and involved other major and minor products and materials. Influential factors in the roles different settlements played in distribution included where people and raw materials were in relation to one another and the mode of transportation. The coastal location of early period settlements and important stone sources was an important aspect of these networks.
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Shade, Molly. "The Burner Project: Privacy and Social Control in a Networked World." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2015. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc801891/.
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As mobile phones become increasingly ubiquitous in today’s world, academic and public audiences alike are curious about the interaction between mobile technologies and social norms. To investigate this phenomenon, I examined how individuals use technology to actively manage their communication behaviors. Through a three-month research project on usage patterns of Burner, a mobile application, this thesis explores the relationships among technology, culture, and privacy. Burner is a service that equips individuals with the means to create, maintain, and/or dissolve social ties by providing temporary, disposable numbers to customers. The application offers a way to communicate without relying on a user’s personal phone number. In other words, Burner acts as a “privacy layer” for mobile phones. It also provides a valuable platform to examine how customers use the application as a strategy for communication management. This thesis represents a marriage of practice and theory: (1) As an applied enterprise, the project was constructed as a customer needs assessment intending to examine how the service was situated in the lives of its users. The findings have successfully been applied to my client’s company strategy and have led to a more informed customer approach. (2) As an academic endeavor, this research contributes to existing scholarship in anthropology, computer-mediated communication, privacy, and design. The results provide rich fodder for discussions about the impact of mobile communication and services.