This paper proposes an alternative approach to evaluating Human- Robot Interaction (HRI), drawing on the field of Anthropology. Considering the user in the traditional robot-environment dyad has major practical and philosophical implications. This paper contends that the traditional scientific method, by itself, is not sufficient to account for the complexity and social nature of the interaction. Instead, it should be complemented with exploratory, ethnographic and reflexive research in order to make additional philosophical, practical and ethical contributions. The HRI evaluation model proposed in this paper builds on existing HRI models and draws on theories and methodologies from the field of Anthropology. It applies a ‘refunctioned’ approach to ethnography, in which roboticists and anthropologists collaborate to evaluate robot interactions from an ethnographic, experimental and ethical perspective to reconcile three distinct ontological views of the user experience: robot-centric, human-centred, and societal impact. The model represents a formative approach to evaluation, in which early-stage explorative and empirical data is used to capture a holistic view of the interaction. This descriptive data may subsequently be parsed to develop specific and testable hypotheses and design principles.