Design Anthropology treats every object as a vessel for information rather than a purely functional form, furniture designed to communicate values, myths and histories to whoever encounters it. Jansen's research draws on Material Culture Theory, reading the imperfect, symbolic textures of human societies as design material in their own right, in deliberate contrast to modernism's pursuit of pure pragmatism. The resulting pieces range from early works built from repurposed road signage to sustained collaborations with Indigenous Australian artists, each object developed through research, storytelling and co-creation rather than through form alone.

The studio's method depends on collaboration and site-specific making as much as material choice, working directly alongside craftspeople, using techniques and materials observed in their own context rather than imported from elsewhere.

In Mumbai's Chor Bazaar and Dharavi districts, this meant improvising through hand-riveting, disassembled car panels and salvaged copper, generating form in direct response to what was locally available. In collaborations with Indigenous Australian artists, cultural knowledge and material history shape the piece as much as Jansen's own design language, each object built collaboratively rather than authored alone.