Social science, design and everyday life: Refiguring showering through anthropological ethnography

In this article, we examine the relationship between social science theory, methodology and design through a comparison of two increasingly popular paradigms. We investigate how social practice theory and phenomenological anthropology frame approaches to social research and co-design. Through the example of design research related to showering, we compare applications of sociological theory with a visual-sensory anthropological ethnography approach. We propose that focusing away from the practice of showering towards the elements of the everyday from which uses of showering are emergent and contingent offers a closer understanding of where to situate co-design interventions.