Zollverein School Blog

In the context of my posting from last week titled “On Design, Management & Anthropology” Nicolas Beucker a new colleague at the Zollverein School and a Professor for public & social Design at the Hochschule Niederrhein in Krefeld/Germany contacted me recently.

Prior to his appointment as a professor Nico has been working at the Institute for Ergonomics and Design research IED in Essen. At the IED which Zollverein School’s President Ralph Bruder founded at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Nico says “… ethnography is a common tool for investigation and innovation!”

With kind permission to publish his comment here on the blog Nico furthermore stated:

“… for more anthropology in design it might be interesting to have a closer look at the academic discussions of the PHD-Design List where the topic comes up every now and than. There are also interesting discussions about anthropology in design going on at the anthrodesign newsgroup.
Concerning design as an innovative discipline the curiosity of the consciously observing anthropologist is acknowledged as the key competence. This is currently realised in the business world, too. Definitely IDEO raised the awareness for the topic, publishing books like “Thoughtless Acts” from their Anthropologist Jane Fulton Suri, about which Andrew Blum reported in BusinessWeek online last summer. In his book “The Ten Faces of Innovation” Tom Kelley even gives the anthropologist the lead of the innovative characters. Without them IDEO would not be what they are.”

Thanks for sharing, Nico! Anyone else willing to share some more resources?!

This entry was posted by Ralf Beuker on Thursday, March 16th, 2006 at 19:23 pm and is filed under Research, Guest Perspectives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.