Dhruv Sharma

Anticipatory Ethnography: Design Fiction as an Input to Design Ethnography

Here we consider design ethnography, and design fiction. We cast these two approaches, and the design endeavor itself, as forward-looking processes. Exploring the means by which design ethnography and design fiction derive their value reveals the potential for a mutually beneficial symbiosis. Our thesis argues that design ethnography can provide design fiction with the methods required to operationalize the practice in industry contexts. Meanwhile design fiction can provide design ethnographers a novel way of extending the temporal scope of the practice, thus deriving actionable insights that are applicable further into the future. “While we are more than ever aware of both the promise and the threat of technological advance, we still lack the intellectual means and political tools for managing progress.” Andrew Feenberg

Developing Radical-Digital Interventions to Tackle Loneliness Amongst the Elderly

Loneliness is a growing issue amongst older people and one popular approach to tackling it is by developing non-medical interventions such as befriending services, mentoring provisions, social clubs, etc. Our analysis reveals that these interventions are predominantly incremental-physical in nature and that there is a lack of radical-digital ones. In this paper we discuss the properties of digital technologies that can be potentially helpful for the elderly and we suggest that social innovation provides a robust theoretical framework to conceive radical-digital loneliness interventions. We also draw parallels between loneliness interventions based on social innovation and the emerging ‘sharing economy’ in the digital world and discuss the role of third paradigm of HCI research in this area.

Shared Ethnography of Shared Cities

This paper aims to foreground issues for design ethnographers working in urban contexts within the smart-city discourse. It highlights ethnography’s role in a shared urban future by exploring how ethnographers might pave the way for envisioning digital infrastructure at the core of Smart City programs. This paper begins by asking whether urban development practitioners can design for inclusive interaction with Smart Urban Infrastructure. The research suggests how ethnographers can work with ‘cities’ to rapidly develop diagnostic tools and capture insights that inform design processes with both utility and inclusive interaction as their key values. This involves rethinking how we consider places where space and information intersect. This work led to developing rapid means to assay a site and sensitize to contextual issues by tapping into heuristic expertise innate in city dwellers. This means doing ethnography in parallel with publics as opposed to performing ethnography ‘on’ them. Hence we discuss a fresh ethnographic perspective that can be especially useful in this context; shared ethnography.