Ethnography: a new form of research?

Thomas Vanderwal pointed me to, “Bus ride to the future“, a BBC article about some research Intel is doing in London.

The funny thing to me was this line: “Ms Bell is part of a group of psychologists, anthropologists and social scientists working for Intel on a new form of industry research called ethnography.”

Obviously, there’s nothing new about ethnography, though the idea of Intel doing ethnographic research may be.

I’m posting this as a reminder that we still have a long way to go before the idea of research for design becomes common knowledge.