Slide 14 of 20
Notes:
My own experience of this gap began in the early 1980s in grappling with the question of how an anthropology of technology might be made relevant to the design of machine interfaces. The first proposal was that, as ethnographers, we might mediate relations between designers and users. Increasingly, however, our reluctance to translate our practice directly into design terms was met with frustrations from the design community. Our hesitation to produce such translations led to our characterization as recalcitrant social scientists, unwilling to roll up our sleeves and engage in the real work of design. For a time I at least was confused by this, feeling that to deliver design implications was indeed my responsibility but that I was unable to do so. I dwelled uncomfortably for several years within this gap between my practice and that of my design co-workers, seeing it not as a systemic discontinuity but as a personal shortcoming.
