Oliver Sacks on Visual Hallucinations

Ethnographic research is important when interaction designers start raising questions about the core values and place that technological tools have in people's everyday practices. The methods used for understanding user behavioral patterns and cultural realities focus on interaction as inseparable from the environment in which it occurs. Rather than analyzing separate data points, ethnography restores actions within their contextual settings and examines behavior as part of a holistic system in which people, things, and the environment affect each other and intertwine with one another.

For years, designers have been advocating for a more equal, diverse, and convivial future. By shaping meaningful conversations about the purpose of design, its raison d’être, designers continuously transform and re-invent design practice to not only benefit screen-deep experiences, but also exploit the full potential of design and technology in informing and changing the ways in which people think, live and act, as individuals and as part of a community.