Ethnography is a broad research approach (rather than a methodology per se) that allows us to get closer to the everyday reality of people in a system. Ethnography includes a variety of qualitative research methods such as semi-structured interviews, participatory observation and focus groups that can be combined in order to give us insights into someone’s life and how they interact with the world (and systems) around them. Ethnography tells us about what makes people tick (such as values, attitudes, norms) and their motivations, actions and behaviours.
Examples and Resources
Examples of ethnographic research methods can be found below.
Interviews are a fundamental research method for direct contact with users or stakeholders, to collect the personal accounts of their experiences, attitudes, opinions and perceptions.
For more information on how to conduct an interview, click on the link below:
Journey mapping is a generative research and analysis method that helps us to understand the interactions that an individual has with a process, service or organization from the perspective of the user or stakeholder. It helps to clarify the holistic experience of an individual, enabling the team to identify areas requiring deeper exploration, patterns and pain points.
For more information on journey mapping, click on the link below:
A persona is a rich description of a fictional person representing what you think you know about different people, such as key or fringe users and stakeholders. They help us to empathize and challenge our assumptions on their needs and expectations. They are a research method to map or represent the data (it’s not meant to be used for data collection). You can develop personas based on your in-depth research on different user groups, for example. Personas can help you:
Figure out who you are and are not designing for, you can’t satisfy everybody.
Represent the problem.
Integrate the experiences of multiple users, based on the in-depth user research you conduct.
Understand the complexity of the problem in an integrated and holistic way.
Focus groups are a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their experience of an issue, product or service. It draws upon participants’ attitudes, beliefs, experiences and reactions, in a way that shows how they change over time in a group, and enables the researcher to learn how people feel about sensitive issues and their reference points. Focus groups are a window into the way that people think about feel about something.
Participant observation is an immersive ethnographic method that allows the researcher to understand an individual’s actions and behaviours in context and within the surrounding culture or subculture. It is a method of anthropology, adapted for design use. Information can be captured through notes or recordings. The ‘AEIOU’ method is a good way to ensure the observer is recording as much rich data as possible. This is a heuristic framework which tracks Activities, Environments, Interactions, Objects and Users.
A template for the 'AEIOU' method can be found here:
