Designing for Technology's Unknown Tribes

This article elaborates how anthropology is opening new design opportunities in everything from consumer products and computer interfaces to mechatronics systems and industrial design. Anthropology can reframe human understanding of familiar places and behavior. Unlike market researchers and designers, anthropologists start with people rather than products. Design anthropology has become a fixture in the tech world. Citrix, Claro, Facebook, Fujitsu, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, and Sapient, all employ anthropologists. Even anthropologists employed by non-tech firms, such as JCPenney and Target, often work on the tech side. Design anthropology is the kind of lens that enables designers to see things in a new light. They can see the people who use a product and how they use it. They can also understand what the product means to the person who buys it.