Salil Sayed | B. Arch. | M.A. in Social Anthroplogy Status Student | tel. + 358 468856125 | salil.sayed(at)taik.fi
The concept of ‘user’ has always been stripped of the local cultural context of the end user. This has helped in the making of global products, those that can be produced anywhere and sold anywhere. The advent of 3G/4G communication technologies however have the potential to open the field, for design to address local cultural contexts. They can have applications that are possible only in a certain locale and yet provide enough sell quantities to justify their production.
The goal of my research is to locate the ‘user’ in his/her local cultural context by doing deep ethnography and applying theories of anthropology. The work will then extend to developing design methods which can utilise the understanding generated by this ethnography. The aim is to deliver a theoretical framework and methods, and ultimately a concept prototype to demonstrate them.