Making homes : ethnography and design

171 Pages·2017·11.935 MB·English

by  Pink, Sarah

Making Homes
Home
Series Editors: Victor Buchli and Rosie Cox
ISSN: 2398-3191
This exciting new series responds to the growing interest in the home
as an area of research and teaching. Highly interdisciplinary, titles feature
contributions from across the social sciences, including anthropology,
material culture studies, architecture and design, sociology, gender studies,
migration studies and environmental studies. Relevant to undergraduate and
postgraduate students as well as researchers, the series will consolidate the
home as a field of study.
Food, Masculinities, and Home: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
edited by Michelle Szabo and Shelley Koch
Sexuality and Gender at Home: Experience, Politics, Transgression
edited by Brent Pilkey, Rachael M. Scicluna, Ben Campkin
and Barbara Penner
FURTHER TITLES FORTHCOMING
Making Homes
Ethnography and Design
SaRaH PINk,
kERSTIN LEdER MaCkLEy,
ROxaNa M OROŞaNU,
VaL MITCHELL aNd
TRa Cy BHa MRa
Bloomsbury Academic
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BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published 2017
© Sarah Pink, Kerstin Leder Mackley, Roxana Moroşanu,
Val Mitchell, Tracy Bhamra, 2017
Sarah Pink, Kerstin Leder Mackley, Roxana Moroşanu, Val Mitchell and
Tracy Bhamra have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval
system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
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on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication
can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-3915-8
PB: 978-1-4742-3914-1
ePDF: 978-1-4742-3919-6
ePub: 978-1-4742-3917-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Cover design: Clare Turner
Cover image © Shotshop GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo
Series: Home
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Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
List of figures vi
List of authors viii
Acknowledgements x
Series preface: Why home? Rosie Cox and Victor Buchli xii
1 Design, ethnography and homes 1
2 Temporalities 21
3 Environments 45
4 Activity and movement 69
5 Methods for researching homes 93
6 Homes in translation 127
References 141
Index 152
List of figures
Figure 1.1 Laundry in the home, Indonesia and
United Kingdom 2
Figure 1.2 Different water and energy infrastructures,
Indonesia and United Kingdom 3
Figure 1.3 The Energy and Digital Living website 4
Figure 1.4 The Laundry Lives website 5
Figure 1.5 The documentary video Laundry Lives 6
Figure 2.1 Lia imagined a machine which everything
came out of neat 30
Figure 2.2 Nur’s older son, a student, imagined a future
where robots would serve humans 30
Figure 2.3 Phones charging during the night 35
Figure 2.4 Participants used a range of timing technologies
and techniques 37
Figure 3.1 Alan took the stick that he kept hidden
behind the TV 51
Figure 3.2 Adi explained how he used a stick to hang
his laundry 51
Figure 3.3 Ning and Mbok Jinah talking about the washing
machine 52
Figure 3.4 Alan showed us the walls 53
Figure 3.5 Alan showed us the loft 54
Figure 3.6 Lighting the English living room 57
Figure 3.7 The Ashtons’ living room TV and sofa 63
Figure 4.1 Food preparation begins and ends in the garden 79
Figure 4.2 Lee’s night-time routine 83
LIST OF FIGURES vii
Figure 4.3 This participant showed us how in the morning he
stopped for a while 85
Figure 4.4 A participant shows his self-tracking data 87
Figure 4.5 Items were placed at strategic points in the
house 89
Figure 5.1 The encounter with this participant started as an
interview over coffee 102
Figure 5.2 The Getting to Know You (GTKY) shared meal
interviews 103
Figure 5.3 A daytime video tour 106
Figure 5.4 Different family members led this tour 107
Figure 5.5 Alan’s video re-enactment of his bedtime
routine 109
Figure 5.6 Roxana and Kerstin spent time with this family
over three days 114
Figure 5.7 Children’s media engagements during LEEDR’s
‘everyday activity’ visits 116
Figure 5.8 The floor plan activity 118
Figure 5.9 Example of Tactile Time collage 120
Figure 5.10 Still image from a video recording of the
Five Cups of Tea series 123
Figure 6.1 Working from home 130
Figure 6.2 Future/Self design concept 133
Figure 6.3 Amina design concept 134
List of authors
Sarah Pink is Distinguished Professor and Director of the Digital Ethnography
Research Centre at RMIT University, Australia. She is Visiting Professor across
the Schools of Design and Civil and Building Engineering at Loughborough
University, UK, and International Visiting Professor at Halmstad University,
Sweden. Her research brings together theoretical and academic scholarship
with applied practice through design ethnography approaches to understanding
and creating interventions in everyday life. Her most recent books include:
Anthropologies and Futures (2017), Theoretical Scholarship and Applied
Practice (2017), Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practice (2016), Digital
Materialities (2016), Screen Ecologies (2016), Doing Sensory Ethnography,
2nd edition (2015), and Media, Anthropology and Public Scholarship (2015).
Her research has been funded by National Research Councils in the United
Kingdom, Spain, Australia and Sweden and through the EU Horizon 2020
programme, as well as through partnerships with companies including
Unilever (United Kingdom), Intel (the United States), Volvo Cars (Sweden),
Suncorp (Australia), and other organizations.
Kerstin Leder Mackley is a Senior Research Associate at UCL’s London
Knowledge Lab, working on the IN-TOUCH: Digital Touch Communication
project. She has previously held research posts at the Loughborough Design
School, the Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University, and the
School of Engineering and Design, Brunel University. Kerstin’s background is
in audience and reception research from a broad media and cultural studies
perspective. She has applied a keen interest in people, emerging technologies
and everyday life to a range of sustainability projects, including energy demand
reduction (LEEDR – Low Effort Energy Demand Reduction, 2010–14) and hot
water consumption (Hothouse, 2014–17). Her ethnographic work has informed
interdisciplinary research challenges and built on the intersections between
anthropology, engineering, user-centred design and applied futures research.
Kerstin has published in a variety of peer-reviewed journals, including Media,
Culture & Society, TOCHI and the Journal of Design Research.
Roxana Moroşanu is a research associate at the University of Cambridge,
UK. She completed a PhD in social anthropology at Loughborough University
in 2014. Roxana works at the intersection between the fields of social
LIST OF aUTHORS ix
sciences of sustainability, digital anthropology, design anthropology and the
new sociology of art. Her current research looks at creativity and fixation in
designers’ work. She has published in a variety of peer-reviewed journals,
including The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, International Journal of
Cultural Studies, and TOCHI. Her most recent book is An Ethnography of
Household Energy Demand in the UK: Everyday Temporalities of Digital Media
Usage (2016). Together with Felix Ringel, she edited the special issue ‘Time-
tricking: Reconsidering Temporal Agency in Troubled Times’ for The Cambridge
Journal of Anthropology (March 2016).
Val Mitchell is a senior lecturer in user-experience design at Loughborough
Design School, Loughborough University, UK. Her PhD entitled ‘Methods for
Exploring User Needs for Future Mobile Products and Services’ was conducted
in collaboration with a major UK manufacturer of mobile communication
technologies. Her research focusses on developing methods and tools for
user-centred design and user-experience design, particularly in relation to
interdisciplinary research and practice. Her research has been funded by the
UK government and research councils as well as commercial organizations.
She has published in a variety of peer-reviewed HCI and design journals,
including ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI),
Interacting with Computers, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, Co-design
and The Design Journal.
Tracy Bhamra is Professor of Sustainable Design and Pro Vice-Chancellor
(Enterprise) at Loughborough University, UK. She has a BSc and MSc
in manufacturing systems engineering and completed a PhD in design
for disassembly and recycling at Manchester Metropolitan University in
1995. In 2003 she established the Sustainable Design Research Group at
Loughborough University that undertakes world-leading research in areas
such as design for sustainable behaviour, methods and tools for sustainable
design, sustainable product service system design and sustainable design
education. Her research has been funded by the UK government and research
councils and by a number of large industrial organizations. Her book Design
for Sustainability: A Practical Approach was published in 2007. Tracy is a
chartered engineer (CEng) and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering &
Technology (FIET), the Design Research Society (DRS) and the Royal Society
for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (FRSA).