Things i learnt from design thinking that would have helped back when I was an anthropology researcher and ethnographer:
1. Your hypothesis doesn’t have to be right.
I guess all researchers know this one; but the emphasis on failing as a step forward or growth mentality that I encountered in design thinking really drove home the point, and away, the fear of failing, which can make your research subconsciously biased to confirm your hypothesis. I was definitely guilty of that. I acted like every thought that I laid as an anthropologist had to be right and valid, and research was just meant to confirm it, and uncover more around the subject. I wish I had approached my research problems with that mindset so prevalent in design thinking back then: Fail early, fail often.
2. Card sorting & Visualizations to turn Raw Data into Insights
So many transcribed interviews and notes from participant observation… And what did I do? I did not use enough sticky notes. I tried to connect the dots in my head, decide what’s most insightful and important, in my head, and come up with arguments, in my head. I used data as snippets to include in my writing, to drive my point. Sometimes I was not being as thorough with engaging with points that didn’t fit with my narrative. I engaged with them when I found them interesting, in my head. And my head, let me tell you, is an interesting place that can secretly hide, lose, alter and amplify what is kept there.
A methodical approach to recording, classifying and analysing all the qualitative data to turn them into insights, would have been a great skill to learn back them. There are also tools to visualize data, to be able to see the big picture and zoom into the details simultaneously, without losing anything, unlike with data visualization in your head.
Back then, I had interviews and important quotes kept in google docs and waded my way around to figure out how to turn notes into insights into the final writing; without knowing I could have sticky notes cardsorted on a board, empathy maps and Airtable databases to record, organize, filter and sort the data. I guess I should have figured that out, but can social science faculty just save us the time and trials and errors in the future, by just telling us to do that stuff, like our design thinking instructors do?
3. Archetypes to group most common traits, behaviour and constraints.
The cool thing with anthropology is that you are not trying to make sweeping generalizations about people (that’s how anthropologists like to feel superior to sociologists 😏 ) In the design world, they get less hung up on that. (have you seen user personas / archetypes?)
Regardless, it would have been so useful for me to be able to group my informants or collaborators by the type of role they played in the story I was telling in my research. It would have helped to organize all my data and insights according to that, so I could find myself more easily in all of it, make comparisons, draw out similarities and new insights. While I was bringing out the individuality and uniqueness of my informants or collaborators, I was also using their opinions and practices to shed insights on the larger cultural and social phenomenon I was researching, so I did have to deal with insights as applied to whole groups of people. The difference was having to simultaneously navigate the attention to the individual.
4. Redefining the Problem Statement and the Phases of The Double Diamond
I remember going through endless re-iterations of my research question. I submitted a topic for my research initially. Then, I started researching and realized how ignorant I was earlier; then re-framed the question. (That’s why you keep the introduction for last). As I kept on researching and learning more, my topic got more and more nebulous and transformed.
I wish I knew about how design thinkers first explore to find the problem, then define the problem, then set out to solve that. I was starting from the assumption that my problem was already defined, and worst I kept getting stuck, spinning my wheels in one phase: defining and redefining the problem, without knowing when to move on.
Nobody told me I could split the process in 4 phases, and define when to move on to the next phase:
Let’s see how the Double Diamond could be applied to an ethnographic research project, with a little bit of a stretch, but bear with me.
1. Discover
You start with a problem focus; you explore the problem area with divergent thinking (literature review, interviews, ethnography)
2. Define
Then you focus, prioritize and narrow down to a more informed problem statement, through convergent thinking.
3. Design
Then you explore again ways of constructing your argument and findings on the subject. You can get more data — the problem and scope are already defined and you don’t change that. You find how you will engage with the other academics in the field that you already identified in the earlier stage and you figure out what position you want to take.
And write. Writing is not a one-way activity, with you just pouring onto a paper until all that is inside is out. No, writing informs and shapes your ideas as you go. Writing allows you to come to other conclusions, to reconsider your ideas and gain more insights. Writing is an exploratory and iterative activity.
Testing. In this context, this could be to get feedback, peer reviews from other academics . You can share what you are doing with your informants / collaborators to gather their feedback, and iterate, make it better.
4. Deliver
Now you focus, no more exploration; just zooming in, consolidating what you got and making what you got make sense. You try not to go back to previous stages in the process, unless absolutely necessary, although it’s tempting. (in my experience, and if you want to finish the project by the deadline, it is not worth it.)
And edit. Editing rarely gets the credit and limelight it deserves, but it is such an important and impactful exercise, that is as important as writing. It shapes the writing in transformative ways. Samiya Bashir, poet and faculty at Reed College, taught a whole class for one semester on the process of editing. Again, I kept it for last, almost as an afterthought, with too little time to let it to do its magic.
Then again, share with friends and other academics, gather feedback and make edits if needed.
Fix your formatting and citations — my nightmare, but the product won’t be ready until you do that.
And submit / deliver!
This is of course just drawing some similarities between my experiences. Design thinking is meant for services and products that serve end users, where empathy and the user-centered approach to uncover needs & pain points are key; whereas academics usually write for other academics (sadly) who will be familiar with the discourse, the debates, the literature.
Nonetheless, the processes of defining a problem, discovery and gathering data, organizing, sorting and visualizing data & insights, and narrowing down on the solution; in rather distinct phases, were all learnings which — if I had to go back to an academic, ethnographic project — I would definitely apply.
