Design Studies —> > IMAGE 1 / Design studies and ethnographically-informed studies of culture have been ona path of convergence and now continue to run on technical practice are, in fact, intrinsic to design.” “there are strong grounds for claiming that ethnographic studies of culture, systems, and Ethnographic Studies My aim in this essay is to demonstrate that this “thin” version is inadequate for understanding the appropriate place of ethnographic research in design education as well as the relevance of cultural analysis to the actual issues and problems that designers face in their daily practice. My central argument is that— whether or not they are academically trained in ethnographic research—all designers are “implicit ethnographers” in the sense that they routinely employ methods of cultural analysis and documentation in ways that inform the design process, often in unseen ways. Rather than conceiving ethnography as a set of expert methods that are somehow separate from design, I wish to claim that these methods are always already present in the design process. As a consequence, I want to advocate on behalf of a fully integrated—or “thick”[11}—conception of the relationship between ethnography and design in which the ongoing cultivation of our capacities for cultural analysis and ethnographic understanding is a core element in the education and practice of all designers. In short, rather than merely being two fields running on parallel tracks, | aim to demonstrate that there are strong grounds for claiming that ethnographic studies of culture, systems, and technical practice are, in fact, intrinsic to design. (IMAGE 3) WE ARE ALL ETHNOGRAPHERS / By saying all designers are “implicit ethnographers” I do not mean to imply that designers are alone in paying attention to the cultural context of their work. On the contrary, the argument I am making is that “attending to cultural context” is a pervasive feature of any socially organized activity, where what I mean by “cultural context” is the local and immediate conditions of “just what we are up to” in some specific setting. How these local analyses and shared understandings are made available within the context of their production is a matter of rather complex, if familiar, ethnographic work. Here, an example will perhaps be helpful. Games and game structures are a fairly universal feature of human societies. One general thing that can be said about game structures is that they consist minimally in a set of conventions that mark certain actions as part of the game and certain others as peripheral or irrelevant to the state of play. So, for instance, if 1 am playing chess and I move my pawn one square forward, that is a move in the game. If, alternatively, | move my coffee cup to my mouth, that is something I am doing “while playing chess,” but it is not part of the game, at least not directly so. Further, games have routine ways of beginning and ending, and within these, typical cycles of play (“moves” in chess, “innings” in baseball, etc.) Practically speaking, this means that—from a player’s perspective—a game consists in a kind of alternation between periods of intense focus on game relevant activities, punctuated by periods of more relaxed focus, disengagement, or rest. And typically these alternations between highly focused and relatively disengaged periods are well marked and monitored within the overall conduct of the game. Take, for instance, the case of card games, and more specifically the game of bridge. Bridge is a game typically played by four people, with two people on each team. Team members sit across from one another on opposite sides of a square table. This physical design eliminates the ability of team members to see each other’s cards, but (interestingly) maximizes their ability to see each other’s bodies and facial expressions. The play of bridge takes place in cycles, called “hands.” Once a hand begins, it is inappropriate for any player to say anything that would allow other players to know what cards they are holding or what they are thinking about in terms of their strategy of play. And, indeed, players monitor one another to ensure that no one gives away information unfairly, and a large part of the game of bridge is about being able to figure out what people have in their hands and what strategies they are following solely with reference to the bids they make and the cards they play. It is in this sense that the mastery of the game of bridge consists in a very specific, context- sensitive form of cultural analysis: You need to understand the rules of the game, but you also need to understand how those rules play out in specific game situations and specific strategies,