Making the case for ethnographic research to inform design

As a big fan of ethnographic research, two recent articles caught my attention.  Though pretty basic and meant for audiences who are not familiar with this type of research, the articles do make a good case for using this methodology in a business context as part of the design process.  I wanted to quote a few paragraphs that showcase insights that can be gained from ethnographic research that you can not get as effectively from other methodologies.  Bold emphasis added by me.

From a United Airlines publication entitled Executive Secrets - Greenhouse Effect:

Though ethnography is indeed a social science, a number of companies use it to gain a greater understanding of their customers. Their objective is to garner information to help create and develop products and services that better meet customers’ needs — especially those that customers haven’t yet articulated.

Jan Chipchase is an ethnographic specialist with the communications firm Nokia. Last summer, he and a team of designers and other ethnographers spent several weeks in Uganda. They traveled to multiple villages and lived with and observed the residents going about their activities. “We’re charged with bringing the experiences of the local culture into the company,” Chipchase says.

While in Uganda, Chipchase’s team noticed local entrepreneurs who had purchased their own cell phones and then sold minutes to other residents. Because customers paid in advance for their calls, they kept close track of their allotted minutes. Drawing from these observations, Nokia designed phones for use globally so that callers could easily see on the screen the number of minutes used per call.

To determine which observations are significant, the researchers focus not on the sensational but on the patterns that appear. Their goal is to find the actions that are common across many participants and discern their meaning. The insight that results can be compelling. “When it’s done right,” says Chipchase, “ethnography can inform and inspire the design process.”

From a Business Week article entitled Nokia's Global Design Sense:

Our process starts with a team of anthropologists and psychologists working in our design group. They spend time with specific types of people around the world to understand how they behave and communicate. This helps us to understand better and to spot early signals of new patterns of behavior that could be harnessed into mobile communication. Our designers often go out into the field to understand the world they are designing for. All of these observations are brought into the design process to inspire and inform our ideas.

One thing both articles don't mention is the fact that for ethnographic research to be truly effective, it should never be done on its own.  Exactly where in the research process ethnography fits in depends on the specific situation:

• Ethnographic research is usually done at the beginning of the design process, as is the case in most of the examples in the articles I just referenced.  This research is used to uncover user needs and help designers come up with high-level concepts.  This should be followed up by quantitative work (desirability surveys, needs & attitude surveys) as well us additional usability testing to further flesh out the concepts.
• Ethnography can also be extremely useful as a follow-up methodology to quantitative research like segmentation studies.  Once a market segmentation has taken place, ethnography can help companies understand each segment better by "living a day in their shoes" and understanding how customers use their products/web site within the context of the rest of their lives.

Ethnography is not an easy methodology to get right -- observing people is easy; knowing what to look for and how to uncover unmet needs and desires is not.  But it can yield extremely valuable insights that all levels of the business can utilize.