Don Rickert Design

Ethnography Basics (Online Presentation)

Depth Interviewing Narrated Slideshow (Online Presentation)

Illustration with narration of a Depth Interview. This video is a series of photos taken of a Participant (brown hair) who is showing the Researcher (red hair) how she transfers pictures from her telephone to her computer. This particular artifact review is interesting because there were lots of work-arounds the Subject had to invent to compensate for bad user interfaces on the phone as well as the computer.

Ethnography Examples: Don Rickert Research & Design

The document, which you may download, describes a number of ethnographic studies (WITH THE IMPORTANT DESIGN INSIGHTS) conducted by Don Rickert Research & Design or in which we participated significantly.

Download Don Rickert Research & Design Ethnography Examples with Design Insights

What Does Ethnography Look Like?

Much of the value we add comes from years' of experience in observing REAL PEOPLE doing REAL THINGS in the REAL WORLD...this is often called Ethnography. The skill, experience and formal training for doing ethnography correctly is ALMOST NEVER found in-house; although, you may feel that it is. It would be an exceedingly rare organization that has qualified in-house ethnography expertise.  See our postings on Ethnography by clicking the Ethnography category on the right of the screen.

So what does Ethnography look like?: The short answer is that it looks like real life. The photos that follow with accompanying commentary may help to communicate the different variations of Ethnography.

Observation

All credible notions of the New Product Development (NPD) process stress the importance of forming, early on, an understanding the people who will use products, how they will use them and the context in which usage is most likely to occur.

This absolutely requires real-world observation of real people on their own turf, doing whatever it is that they do. This real-world observation as part of New Product Development is often called "Ethnography", a term borrowed from several other fields, especially Anthropology.

Is Ethnography the "new core competency", as claimed by a fairly recent article in Business Week (www.businessweek.com)? We think YES.

Ethnography in New Product Development

While being inspired by the observation of people on their own turf that is the hallmark of traditional ethnography, New Product Ethnography is specifically focused on New Product Development. The emphasis is on providing actionable insights into user needs and desires.

What is Ethnography?

The term ‘Ethnography’ seems to have achieved the dubious status of buzz-word. There are many definitions, depending on who is doing the defining. A good definition of traditional ethnography is—

‘...the art and science of of describing a group or culture. It is a form of cultural anthropology using fieldwork to observe the group and derive patterns of behavior, belief, and activity’ (http://www.creatingbreakthroughproducts.com/).

No matter what definition you get, there are several signature attributes:

• Observation of people doing whatever it is they do on their own turf–Going out into the “real world” and observing is critical.
• Qualitative in approach–For instance, statistical analyses are not normally  performed on the discoveries of studies deemed to be ‘ethnographic.’
• Inductive in nature–does not start with hypotheses
• Interaction with ‘Research Subjects’ is encouraged–Many, especially those with legitimate claim to the title of ‘Professional Ethnographer’, stress that ‘Participant-Observation’ is a necessary attribute of ‘true’ ethnography.
• Depth Interviewing (Long-Open-ended Interviews) is often used
• Hypothesis generation and prediction–There is not universal agreement about whether hypothesis generation, based on observations, should be part of ethnography or whether it should be purely descriptive.

Ethnography and Business Meet

Business decision makers are always seeking better ways to answer questions like:

• Who are the target customers?
• What are their days like?
• What are the real problems they wish they could solve with a product that your company might make?
• What are the opportunities for new products that these unmet needs present?
• Will people pay enough for these new products for the company to make money?

The New 'Ethnographic' Methods Arrive on the Business Scene

In the 1990s, various methods began to pop-up that resembled traditional Ethnography in that they were qualitative in style and emphasized:

• Observation of people on their own turf (e.g. their homes, offices, in stores, and so forth)
• Induction rather hypothesis-testing
• Interaction with people being observed
• Depth Interviewing

Some of the names by which the new methods are known:

• ‘Shadowing’
• ‘Day-in-the-Life Studies’
• ‘Ethnography Lite’
• ‘Consumer Ethnography’
• ‘Field Observation’
• ‘New Product Ethnography’ (Cagan and Vogel)
• ‘Observational Research’ (Abrams)

'New Product Ethnography'

• A blend of traditional ethnographic methods with new technology and interdisciplinary research teams for observing, recording, and analyzing social situations.
• More than just applied anthropology
• Predictive as well as descriptive
• Emphasis on “actionable insights” into consumer behavior and lifestyle activities.
• Has emerged into a powerful new area for predicting–
• Consumer preferences for product features, form, material and color
• Patterns of use and purchase

Ethnography Helps Us with Our Other Research Methods

• Quantitative Market Research

• • Helps us construct hypotheses
  • Helps to identify the right questions on surveys
  • Who to survey

• Focus Groups
• • Choosing the right issues to discuss
  • Who to include?

• Usability Testing
• • Selecting the right types of participants
  • Having them perform the most relevant tasks
     

Depth Interviews

Depth Interviews are actually one of the many methods used in the course of Ethnography. They are lengthy interviews that are unscripted. To the User, they are simply a long conversation about them, their needs and desires.

The purpose of Depth Interviews in the current context is to ensure that the prototypes being evaluated in Usability Testing really are perceived as valuable and appealing (i.e. useful, usable and desirable) to customers.

What is Ethnography?

The term ‘Ethnography' or its many synonyms often comes up in the context of New Product Development. For example, Cagan and Vogel state that “the most powerful area of new product research is an emerging field of new product ethnography.” (Cagan and Vogel, 2003). Ethnography also plays an important role in our model; therefore, it will be useful to describe the method and its central role.

What is Ethnography?

The term ‘Ethnography' seems to have achieved the dubious status of buzz-word. There are many definitions, depending on who is doing the defining. A good definition of traditional ethnography is—

…the art and science of of describing a group or culture. It is a form of cultural anthropology using fieldwork to observe the group and derive patterns of behavior, belief, and activity (Cagan and Vogel, 2002, p. 183).

No matter what definition you get, there are several signature attributes—

• Observation of people doing whatever it is they do on their own turf —Going out into the “real world” and observing is critical.
• Qualitative in approach —For instance, statistical analyses are not normally performed on the discoveries of studies deemed to be ‘ethnographic.'
• Inductive in nature —does not start with hypotheses
• Interaction with ‘Research Subjects' is encouraged —Many, especially those with legitimate claim to the title of ‘Professional Ethnographer', stress that ‘Participant-Observation' is a necessary attribute of ‘true' ethnography.
• Depth Interviewing (Long-Open-ended Interviews) is often used
• Hypothesis generation and prediction —There is not universal agreement about whether hypothesis generation, based on observations, should be part of ethnography or whether it should be purely descriptive.

Why Surveys and Usability Testing are Often a Waste of Time and Money

A recent rant in Interactions Magazine (January - February 2006) asks the question: are you doing 'User Research' or 'Loser Research'?  The author is not referring to researching people who are 'losers' but rather researchers who are not doing good work-- 'Loser Researchers'. That article inspired our post below.

Attempting to develop any kind of product without a clear notion of who the users are and what they might do with the product is a very bad idea. Furthermore, even starting other types of consumer research, such as surveys and usability testing before the product opportunity is fully understood, or before personas (i.e. users) and scenarios (i.e. the things they do) are defined is ineffective. Lacking a clear notion of who the users are and what they do, how could one even know what questions to ask or what to test in the usability lab? In science jargon, asking irrelevant or just plain wrong research questions is called 'Type III Error'.

The common practice of conducting usability testing prior to rigorous Discovery Research, such as Field Observation and Depth Interviews, is a principal reason for so much usability testing being a waste of time and money, and this hurts the credibility of Usability Engineering as well as its related professions.

By analogy, conducting a usability test before scenarios are developed is like booking a recording studio before any of the songs are written--very expensive and very little valuable output.

New Product Development Needs More than Just Ethnography

After reading some of our posts, one could get the impression that we believe Ethnography is the magic bullet for increasing new product success to something more than the typical 3% to 5% probability. This is not quite the case. Believing that Ethnography is the single answer to product success would be just as ridiculous as the apparent belief held by firms that push their brand of usability testing, or focus groups, or surveys, or design, etc. to the exclusion of all other approaches.

What we do say is that, unless you deal with the so-called 'fuzzy front end' of New Product Development (the part that comes before Implementation--whatever you want to call it) in a disciplined manner, you should expect about a 3% to 5% probability of success.

There are four primary core competencies required in order for the front end of NPD to yield actionable information: Research, Marketing, Design and Engineering. Ethnography falls under the Research category. The four core must competencies work collaboratively in a process that can be summarized in the following diagram (click to enlarge it):

There are a number of influences, not the least of which is our own experience, on which we base our approach to NPD. Click the 'continuation' link below to read about these.

Interesting Description of What an Ethnographer is

In a recent Business Week article, The Science of Desire, Ethnographers are described as:

'...a species of anthropologist who can, among other things, identify what's missing in people's lives -- the perfect cell phone, home appliance, or piece of furniture -- and work with designers and engineers to help dream up products and services to fill those needs.'

The rather lengthy article is full of informtion of how companies that 'get it' are using Ethnographers and other Social Scientists to observe the real world in search of inspiration for new products that people actually need and want. I can't resist including the closing sentence in this posting:

'...with anthropologists in ascendance, engineers -- and everyone else -- had better get used to it.'

If it makes you feel any better, in addition to being Ethnographers, Brad Wiederholt is an Engineer (actually, a Computer Scientist) and I (Don Rickert) am a Market Researcher & Industrial Designer. We look forward to comments from engineers and everone else :-)

DR

So You Think Ethnography is Just a Fad?

There has been a lot of press on ethnography as the new core competency for new product development of late. Business week has a slew of recent articles and online slide shows. Ethnography firms looking for a way to state their value proposition to 'the suits' need look no further! (need to finish this posting quickly so we can start re-crafting our own 'elevator speech.')

For a concise slide show of some recent contributions of ethnography to product breakthroughs by identifying actual consumer needs (by Spencer E. Ante), click on the link at the end of this posting. See ethnography-driven new product introductions from:

Motorola (Product: new cell phone)
Sirius Satellite Radio (Product: Portable satellite radio)

Intel (Product: PCs for emerging markets)

Citigroup (Product: New payment service and a device called PayPass)

OXO (Product: Professional grade hardware tools--from pizza slicers and bottle openers to hammers!) Note: I saw these new OXO tools just yesterday while buying Dremel bits at Lowe's for a new WARP3 Insights product model.

Business Week Slide Show on Ethnography Hits

The “Closed-to-Outsiders” Sub-Cultures Dr. Don Rickert Has Gained Access To

All of the following groups, in varying degrees, are essentially closed to “outsiders”. Dr. Don Rickert has the innate skill, which he has cultivated in his professional life, to gain trust and access to the following and other groups in order to learn more about their unmet needs, their desires and what is appealing to them at an emotional level. Don has done everything from sanctioned drag racing, to learning to row (and joining a team) to spending days on end in neurosurgery operating rooms.

Clients that commissioned Ethnography studies involving the groups listed include:

• Telecommunications & Information Technology company
• NIST (National Institute of Standards & Technology)
• Sporting equipment manufacturer
• Musical Instrument company
• New Product Development (NPD) Firm
• US Air Force
• A major  US  Grocery  chain
• Electric Power Research Institute
• Enterprise Software company
• CRM Software company
• Enterprise Software company
• Telecommunications company
• Several Large Financial Services Providers

 

Medical

• Medical Students
• Medical School Faculty
• Neurosurgeons
• Radiologists
• Hospital Information Technology Managers and Staff

Music

• Youth Prodigy Musicians (likely to earn scholarships to top music schools such as Berklee, Julliard and Peabody) and their parents
• “A-List” Professional Musicians (i.e. recording artists)
• Top “Old Time” and Bluegrass Musicians (Fiddlers in particular)
• Contra and Square Dancers
• Cajun Music and Traditional Dance Enthusiasts

Graphic Arts

• The “Folk” and “Outsider” Art culture (gallery owners as well as Artists)

Active & Extreme Sports

• Competitive Rowers
• Rock Climbers
• Martial Arts (Mixed Martial Arts, Judo, Tai Kick-Boxing, etc.)
• High-performance large boats
• Sailing Enthusiasts

Historic Re-enactment Hobbyists

• Civil War Re-enactors
• Scottish Highlander Military Re-enactors
• Colonial Period Re-enactors

Automotive Culture

• Amateur Drag Racing

Financial Services (Banks)

• Bank Senior Managers
• Bank Tellers
• Bankers
• Bank Call Center Staff Members
• Customer Service Representatives

Telecommunications/Cable TV

• Cable TV/Broadband Installers

Miscellaneous

• Day Care Center Managers and Staff
• Cleaning Business Owners
• Niche Craft Business Owners