This book explores the disciplines of the social sciences, which help investigate the relationships between people and design, in assessing the role that products and the built environment play in peoples lives and in setting product requirements.

This book explains how social psychology, sociology, and anthropology can provide valuable techniques for investigating the relationship between people and design. Written not only by designers and applied theorists, but also by specialists working at the front line in the consumer product industries, the book discusses the existing realities and the benefits that an interdisciplinary approach could bring to research, practice, and education. It also identifies and defines possible directions for interdisciplinary work connecting design and the social sciences. Design and the Social Sciences provides methods that will result in products that are functional and ergonomically sound.