Design Services

Our ethnographic methods and participatory experiments aid in the design process to help build things that work and that people will use and value.

As field ethnographers, we are very much involved with research participants in many aspects of their lives during fieldwork. People are more open to us because we listen to them, we address their questions, and we often become their friends. These earned relationships helps us understand what people say and do, and with a bit of history and theory, helps us interpret the meanings products and services have for people. This allows at least partial integration of users in the design process as collaborative partners. We encourage clients to continue and add value to this kind of relationship with their customers.

PacEth's services do not stop at research. We offer development work for products and services. We can identify key steps in a process and its break-down points and provides insightful solutions. Through user-participatory experiments, we can develop concepts for new or revised products and services. We provide refined concepts with specifications and different levels of modeling.

We are especially interested in sustainable design. We usually come across consumers who try to be environmentally friendly (like using used cooking oil for their diesel-powered car) and we are keen to make clients aware of possible opportunities in the disconnect between product offerings and consumer's desire for more sustainable products and services. Our expertise in environmental policy, consumer products, water-saving toilet systems, and community organizing and action programs helps us do that kind of work..

As a multidisciplinary team we are experienced in facilitating fieldwork for and with engineers and designers. Because of the regions where we work, more often than not we do teaching and facilitation in two or more languages at once--including the language of product engineering.