INSIGHT on INSIGHT: Utilizing Ethnographic Immersion
WHAT AND WHEN: Proper usage
Ethnography refers to the study of people and culture. Ethnographic insight is the idea of studying respondents in their natural environment to reveal insights based on finding connections or associations or beliefs that might otherwise be overlooked or go unarticulated.
It goes hand-in-hand with approaching issues and opportunities with the perspective of an anthropologist.
This technique is best for exploration and discovery. It is not a good approach to test or validate ideas.
This is a significant departure from typical qualitative insight techniques (like focus groups or in-depth interviews) where a respondent is treated more like a test subject. With these techniques, participants are invited to an artificial or laboratory setting where the encounter is all about looking at and into the respondent. The accuracy of answers to direct questions largely depends on how well participants can recall and articulate.
Ethnographic insight shifts this focus. It involves participating with the respondent and seeing the world through the respondent’s eyes. It consists of meeting the respondent in the context of their regular life and shadowing them as they go through certain routines.
The act of questioning respondents still leads to some amount of interruption to their natural behaviors and bias as respondents are reminded they are being observed. However, unblemished observation can reveal key insights without needing to ask questions that probe into psychographics, attitudes, and associations.
The use of ethnographic insight is appropriate for many situations, some of which include:
- When the use or integration of products is ubiquitous (where respondents likely aren’t even aware of how they are used) or the use is so complicated that respondents are unlikely to accurately recall and articulate every step.
- When there is a belief that products are used in ways different than the instructions or recommendations suggest.
- When there may be nuance or subtleties that could not be understood solely through verbal description.
- When certain perceptions or attitude may be difficult to articulate or describe out of context.
- When the learning objectives require getting beyond the isolated product or service and learn how it fits into the larger context of one’s life.
WHY: The benefit and value
Designing and executing ethnographic work is relatively complex and time consuming, which drives the cost. However, there are economical options like mobile ethnography, which utilize mobile devices to capture data, but keep the research much more removed from the participants.
The ability to get immersed in the context of a participant’s life and to dive extremely deep into habits and attitudes creates the potential for ethnographic insight to produce unique and profound results.
Projects can produce pages of new information or they may reveal one priceless insight that leads to huge success (like revealing the root cause of how and why people do not use your product properly or do not experience the promised benefit).
HOW: Tips to guide a basic approach
The depth of insight that ethnographic work can reveal is generally only limited by flaws in how a project is designed. Some important things to consider include:
- Because ethnographic research focuses on a very limited number of participants, make sure representative and articulate participants are selected.
- Know who are the right people from the client to interact with participants.
- Know how much the interactions need to be orchestrated to ensure relevant information is captured, but not so constrained or contrived to no longer be natural.
- Recognize in advance what tangents could be worth taking and when things have gotten off track.
- Finish sessions by paraphrasing the key observations back to the participant to make sure the interpretation is accurate.
- Understand exactly how the learning will translate into tangible actions, and not just more education.
APPLICATION: What to do with the results
Ethnographic insights are typically done as part of a larger multi-phase project. While some learning may have clear and immediate implications, much of the learning is more likely to require further testing and development of new stimulus that seeks to alter an established habit or attitude.
Other ways to ensure application of this work is successful include:
- Taking time to craft a compelling summary to tell the story of participants and help others absorb the experiences that lead to the stories.
- Translating insights into personality profiles that preserve the context that is so important to make sense of the category-specific learning.
- Following up with quantitative work to validate how the underlying insights or implications apply to the larger population.