ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines how the subfield now known as design anthropology has developed hand-in-hand with the study of the digital and with digital ways of working—one of many parallel fields concerned with computing. It evaluates some of the contributions to emerge. The chapter is predicated on the idea that every anthropologist needs to know more about this area, not only because we are all potentially implicated in it, but because we need to think about how it may or may not be productive for us and for others. Then the chapter describes and illustrates the interdisciplinary dialogues which design anthropologists are involved in. Computer-supported cooperative (or collaborative) work describes the intensive contextual study of group work to help design systems which support it. User-centred design refers to a set of design methodologies which start with potential users or communities of users.
