Ethnography

Focusing on daily lives

What is Ethnography?

Ethnography is a research technique that focuses on people or citizens’ lifestyles, behaviour and attitudes. This technique involves the observation of people in their usual environment as well as interviews to collect personal comments about how they feel. Sometimes this is also called “Wayfinding”.

This activity highlights how users carry out everyday tasks with a product (at home, while commuting, in the car, while shopping, at work…). A quantitative study usually follows the interviews in order to validate the trends with more participants.

What Are the Benefits?

With ethnographic research, we:

• understand the people in their own context, their daily lives, lifestyles, social relationships, behaviours and attitudes, how they use the technologies and their real surroundings.
• reveal design solutions that are based on real user interactions and experiences (this technique moves beyond the technical specifications of the product).
• develop emphathy. It is an opportunity to put oneself in the person’s situation and experience the world as they do (i.e. to see what they see, to feel what they feel, to hear what they hear).

When to use?

Depending on the project and technology, you may choose to use an ethnographic study,

• at the strategy and ideation phase to support strategic decisions evaluating ideas and concepts to shape the user experience, or
• at the development phase to gauge user reactions and modify the product experience accordingly, or
• with a ready product to feed ideas into the next release/update/product.

What we deliver?

You’ll receive a Strategic Recommendations Report, which includes real insights on how people live, act and react in the targeted context. This report, containing videos, personas and experience maps, enables you to design your product or service according to users needs and expectations.