It is often through criticism that the world moves forward. In 1971, this became true for Design Practice through Victor Papanek and his book “Design for the Real World”. This guy was highly critical of the design discipline and how designers worked back then.

In his book, Victor showed that it was important to incorporate anthropology in the design practice. He wanted designers to not only create objects but also have a socially and ecologically positive impact. Do you remember anthropology? It’s this thing that started in 1647 and was interested in humans. Then came ethnography, which was interested in the observation of humans and their cultures.

It is through the contribution of work like the one by Victor that today Service Designers include tools from ethnography and anthropology in their practice.

This article is part of the book "A Tiny History of Service Design, " a tiny two-hour read that goes through the historical events that created what Service Design is today.