ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that design ethnography for the home needs to be based on a reconceptualized relationship between everyday life in the home, ethnography and design, and that this entails aligning the temporalities of the ethnographic processes. Hunt is right that conventional anthropological ethnography has been something of a misfit with design and intervention, yet his description caricatures ethnography in the form that is advocated by the more traditional anthropologists. The Ashtons' home was ongoingly designed through their intentional and continuing engagement with home improvement and Do it Yourself activities. In design research this temporality of home is equally relevant. For example, Mallaband, Haines and Mitchell discuss how in another interdisciplinary energy-focused project 'Consumer Appealing Low Energy technologies for Building REtrofitting', they used a bespoke participatory design tool to construct with householders a timeline of their home around which they told us their home improvement stories.
