Recently there has been a move towards incorporating ethnographic practices into the research phase of the design process. Groundbreaking work has been done by design consultancies like IDEO (2001), and by trend-predictors such as The Future Laboratory. Large corporations (BMW, Philips and Mark & Spencer) employ ethnographic methods to gather data on the use of...

This paper describes a practice-led research project undertaken in Australia in 2006, in which the author sought to explore the relationship between radical changes in cultural/geographical environment and the production of unique forms of material culture.