Seismographic imaging via the ethnogram: The potential of tailored ethnographic techniques in architectural education to capture below-the-surface user experiences.

Abstract

Set in an architectural design educational context, this paper contributes to tackling the current weak spot of grasping and including future users' socio-spatial experiences in the early design stages, by tailoring ethnography to this particular field of architectural design. To capture below-the-surface experiences, we bring together ethnographic research methods and architectural design, steered by the Design-Based Research (DBR) theoretical framework (Euler, 2014), fostering an educational learning aim and providing a handhold for the fuzzy front end of the architectural design process, enabling young designers to collect rich, below-the-surface user data.

We first conducted a literature review in ethnography to explore how current techniques should be tailored to the specifics of the architectural design context. Next, we empirically tested these tailored techniques for three consecutive rounds in the educational design context of a master seminar. The seminar’s participating master students in (interior) architecture developed and executed three ethnographic studies to capture below-the-surface user experiences in three different spatial and social contexts, exploring three different design challenges. These iterations led to (i) the design principle of ‘seismographic imaging’, an approach characterized by applying a well-balanced mix of tailored ethnographic techniques to capture and interpret rich, below-the-surface user experiences. Reflecting on the benefits and challenges thereof resulted in (ii) the development of a design tool, the “ethnogram”, which can be introduced in the architectural design studio, to aid design students in developing a well-balanced mix of tailored ethnographic techniques considering a specific spatial context, target group and design challenge, and necessary to render designerly rich user data.

That way, this paper fulfills an identified need for methodological educational strategies regarding the collection and integration of user experiences in the early design stages of an architectural design process in an educational context and contributes to the theoretical understanding of the possibilities of the DBR model.