Space and Place as User-Experience: Taking Notting Hill as an Example

Abstract

The articulation between user-experience, design thinking and business anthropology is a promising one and a source of multiple insights yet to be explored. This article is based on an ethnographic account of relations between groups across Notting Hill, West London. It postulates that the building of a fieldwork site can be seen as developmental process of making meaning of place in all ways similar to local meaning-making. Making use of a social psychology method (thematic networks) to analyse fieldwork material the author tries to capture a place that is not ontologically prior to the classifications and counter-classifications played on it. Taking a psychological anthropology stance, it is suggested that place is found in the dynamic contrast of different forms of embodying validity by the human kinds who carry a place and are carried by it, in return. Such a view carries direct implications for the fields of user experience, design planning, urban policies of space and the interaction between business anthropology and usability issues.