Research / Ethnographic Research

What is Ethnographic Research? 

Ethnographic research is observing someone in their natural environment to understand motivations, attitudes and behaviors. 
  • Typical method includes observation along with a semi-structured interview to obtain information about the context of use, where users are asked a set of standard questions and then observed as they interact in their own environments
  • It differs from standard interviews by allowing the interviewee to share artifacts of the environment, demonstrate processes with tools on hand. 
  • Through the process of demonstration, this method allows participants to be “in the moment” and recall things in a more meaningful way.

Why do we do Ethnographic Research? 

  • To design effective experiences we need to know specifically who we’re building for and what they do.
  • We do site visits, observations and interviews to see real people, in real settings, doing real work, because understanding the audience is essential to designing appropriate tools for the workplace.
  • To capture the behaviors as well as the motivations behind the behaviors.

Case Studies 

Smart Home Innovation
  • Objective: Explore smart home early adoption, understand how people are using voice assistants and other new technologies, look for unmet needs.
  • Method: 12 in home interviews, all with smart devices, 6 with voice assistants and 6 without, 6 in CA and 6 in Houston TX, age range 30-59.
  • Research Findings: Major concerns were setup, energy use, security, privacy of information with a voice assistant, interoperability, adding more devices and falling short of truly being useful. Delights were easy shopping, quality speakers, fun with the new “family member”, control from outside of the home.
  • Results: This project spawned follow up work and led to an inventor patent submission-First Respondent Digital Assistant Emergency Recognition and Communication Device, filed April 2017 International Application No. PCT/US2017/028910
Digital Smart Scanner
  • Objective: Explore college libraries, focus on technology, copiers, scanners, internal systems and interacting with physical books.
  • Method: Interviewed a college librarian, conducted ethnographic visits to 3 college libraries and did contextual interviews with 6 students from 4 colleges.
  • Research Findings: Some publications were difficult to find, reserving space to study can be difficult, some books are too large or heavy to scan information easily, phone pictures may be hard to review, checking out is not easy, some books can not leave the library, there is no easy way to find related materials, proper citations are difficult. A paper prototype of a portable scanning device was created and tested with additional students.
  • Results: This research led to the creation of a new product, a digital scanner that is portable and includes features to digitally enhance physical content by highlighting related content and providing proper citation formats. The EU patent has been granted, Mobile Device with Transparent Display and Scanner Patent WO2018063339

​Warehouse Project
​Explored warehouses to create a handheld tracking and inventory device. Results showed that the product needed to be used in extreme weather, person may be wearing gloves, device needs a handle to be stowed in tool belt and should be ruggedized in case of drops.
Hospital Project
​Explored a portable tablet for doctors. Discovered that the size of the lab coat dictated the size of the device. The barrier to adoption was the software systems in place that were not easily translated to mobile platforms.

​Education Project
​Explored schools and student homes in three countries to understand how technology was being implemented into the schools. Found the 1-1 model to be desired as long as there was an IT budget and training for the teaching staff. Parents needed reassurance that their child would not be held responsible for an expensive device.