Perceptive Sciences - White Papers: Ethnography & Ethnographic Methods

Do any of these dilemmas sound familiar?

• Our product did well in usability testing but is not selling well.

• We did a survey to identify customer preferences, but the results seemed conflicting.

• We designed our product using focus group input, but it got bad reviews in the press.

• We have several products that are successful in a particular region or with a particular age group, but we want to figure out how to make them appealing to a larger market.

If so, ethnography, a research method used by anthropologists and sociologists, can help.

What is ethnography?

Ethnography is the systematic study and documentation of human cultures, or the taken-for-granted, unwritten rules that regulate how groups of people go about day-to-day life. Applied to the study of consumer products and services, ethnography aims to understand customers’ use of a product or service within the course of their daily activities—whether at home, work, or in recreational settings.

Specifically, an ethnographic approach allows researchers to identify a variety of previously unknown (or under-appreciated) situational factors influencing customers’ use and perceptions of a product. For instance, ethnographic researchers studying the use of glass measuring cups for OXO International, a maker of ergonomic kitchen tools, discovered that the standard height of kitchen countertops resulted in users frequently stopping while filling the cup, bending over to be at eye level with the cup markings to check the amount, then standing back up to continue filling. As a result of the study, OXO designed a new measuring cup that can be read accurately from above. Other common situational factors surfaced through ethnographic studies include the concurrent use of other products, interruptions during product use, and interactions with family members, friends, or coworkers that influence a customers’ use and perceptions.

The Ethnographic Method

The purest version of ethnography involves an approach called “participant-observation” where the researcher takes on an integral role in the group or activity being studied and remains in the setting through a complete activity cycle. In a sociological study of a society, the activity cycle typically takes a year to complete and the researcher can observe all the relevant participants from one or a small number of locations. Studies of consumer activities obviously require modifications of this standard approach.

Ethnographic researchers studying consumer behavior attempt to stay true to the fundamental principles of ethnography while adapting the approach to the unique characteristics of the product or service of interest. The key principles include:
• Participant activity must be observed in its natural context.
• The researcher seeks to seek the product or situation through the participant’s eyes.
• Observation should span a full activity cycle.
• Recurring patterns of action are the most meaningful.

Observation in the natural context

The uniqueness of the insights available from an ethnographic study result in large part from observing customer activity in its natural context, whether that is a home, shopping mall, or soccer field. Because many products and services can be used in a wide variety of contexts, a comprehensive study of a single consumer good will typically require researchers to travel among and adapt themselves to diverse settings. For instance, a study of small business owners’ use of a software product required researchers to conduct observation in settings ranging from corporate-style office complexes to corner desks in the owner’s kitchen or garage with pets circulating underfoot. In order to preserve the naturalness of the use context, the researcher adapts to the opportunities and constraints of each setting rather than asking the participant to modify his or her practices.

Despite being in their own environments, participants may nonetheless feel self-conscious about being observed, and understandably so. In more participative settings such as group video game playing, a researcher can decrease his or her salience as an observer by taking part in the game. For studies of more solo activities or those requiring specialized knowledge the researchers do not possess, however, they must rely on interpersonal tactics to put the participants at ease.

For product use contexts considered too private for observation, researchers may opt for alternative data collection methods such as keeping an activity log or a journal documenting the frequency and duration of product use and the customers’ thoughts and feelings during use. These are effective methods but would not be considered “ethnographic.” When designing a product usability or market research study, a Perceptive Sciences researcher would consider the importance of the use context for answering the client’s questions, then determine how to best gain access to that context with the least amount of disturbance to the natural flow of activity.

Seeing through the customer’s eyes

In addition to conducting the research in the context of use, the other defining characteristic of ethnographic research is the emphasis on seeing the product, service, or situation through the customer’s eyes. Consumer product companies and researchers typically have pre-existing definitions of “market segments,” “use cases,” and “product features” based on outcomes of previous market research studies and conceptual models circulated in the industry. Consumers, however, have their own ways of segmenting products, people, and situations that may or may not coincide with those of the product producer or research team.

In contrast to a sales approach, which attempts to educate and persuade a customer to adopt a particular perspective, the ethnographer’s goal is to learn how the customer sees the world and where the product or service fits into it. For instance, marketing professionals for an electronic product may segment user groups by age due to known generational differences in technology use. The users, however, may differentiate subgroups within age ranges (e.g., the cool kids, the jocks, the nerds) or may draw age distinctions more finely (e.g., 17-18, 19-22, 23-25) or more grossly (e.g., over and under 30) than the marketing professionals. As a result, a product intended to have broad appeal within the 19-26 year old demographic may actually be rejected by a majority of that group due to its association with a particular subculture with which they do not identify. To prevent such a blunder, Perceptive Sciences ethnographers elicit and employ the participants’ language and organizing schemes rather than imposing their own terminology.

Observing the full activity cycle

The actual design of an ethnographic study requires researcher judgment to define the full cycle of activity. For instance, the use of an ATM machine takes only a few minutes and is a relatively straightforward process with limited variations. While a researcher could observe consumers solely during their use of the machine (the typical limits of a usability study), the researcher could also define the activity cycle to include the participant’s time at home or in the car prior to using the machine, the management of cash and receipts afterward, and even the person’s monthly account reconciliation process to better understand how ATM transactions fit into the person’s overall banking experience. Perceptive Sciences researchers work with the client to better understand their problems and interests in order to define the limits of an activity cycle that will yield the most beneficial results.

Recurring patterns of action

Finally, the ethnographer observes for recurring patterns of customer action. These tend to be routinized behaviors that have become so habitual that the participants are no longer conscious of them. As a result, they are not reported in surveys, focus groups, or lab studies where participants are removed from the natural process and context of use. For instance, the repeated bending described earlier in the OXO study of the glass measuring cup indicated a limitation of the current cup design that had not been reported in any prior data collection efforts. In order to identify these patterns, it is helpful to observe the same participant through multiple activity cycles as well as observing multiple participants through full activity cycles.

Validating Ethnographic Findings

Despite these well-established principles for data collection, managers may still be wary of ethnographic methods due to their reliance on observation, admittedly a subjective process. Over the years, anthropologists and sociologists have adopted a number of practices to counter the numerous biases inherent in observation. For instance, systematic note-taking, or other form of recording, is used to capture the full range of action. This ensures that the action shows up in the data set whether or not the researcher perceives the action to be significant. Then when the data are sorted, if the action was a recurring one, it will surface as a pattern to be understood. Another method is openly checking interpretations with a subset of participants. People have a deep need to feel understood and will typically tell a researcher if s/he has misunderstood. Finally, asking researchers who did not participate in the data collection to analyze a subset of the data provides an objective check on the consistency of the ethnographer’s analysis.

When would an Ethnographic Study be Useful?

Ethnographic studies can be employed at all stages of the product development and product maturation cycles. At the conceptual stage, an ethnographic study can be used to inform designers’ understanding of the contexts of use, unmet latent needs, and customers’ understanding of the product (or service) landscape. Ethnography at the conceptual stage can also be used to inform an organization’s development of design personas, a tool for keeping a design process on track and for pre-empting “feature bloat.”
During the design phase, ethnography can be used in conjunction with usability testing or market research methods both to validate design prototypes and to study competitors’ products in use. Finally, once a product is in the marketplace, ethnographic studies can be used to identify opportunities for product enhancements and unanticipated uses of the product that can be leveraged through marketing.

Though labor-intensive, ethnographic studies offer opportunities for insight into customer needs, perceptions, and practices that cannot be gleaned through other methods that rely on participants’ explicit reporting. At the same time, it does not replace other methods better suited for testing and comparative analysis. For instance, usability testing in a lab setting is still the most efficient way to evaluate customers’ perceptions of the look and feel, usefulness, and user-friendliness of a company’s product or service offerings. Ethnography can then complement usability testing by providing insight into how the product or service is actually used and perceived once integrated into the variety of contexts and relationships that constitute the customers’ lives.

Perceptive Sciences Coproration is a science based market research, user interface, design, and user testing firm, employing experts in the fields of cognitive psychology, information sciences, and human factors studies. Perceptive Sciences serves best-in-class technology based companies and market leaders in a wide range of industries in the U.S. and Europe.