I recently wrapped up a week long training workshop with a large educational financial services firm. Our first day focused on research methods. We studied various methods, both qualitative and quantitative, and even did a few practical exercises on formulating research questions. One of the tricks of doing research is determining the best research methods to use. Notice I said "methods" not "method." I’m a firm believer in using more than one method of research. This helps as a filtering agent for bias and weaknesses. Every method has a particular set of strengths, weaknesses and biases. So, I always advocate using more than one to compensate for that.

One of my favorite research methods is ethnography. Unfortunately, it is arguably the most time consuming and costly, making it more difficult to sell to clients even when it is the best approach for a project. And while I don’t get to do ethnography as often as I’d like to, here is hope. A recent Business Week article has brought Ethnography out of the shadows. Now, the cynic in me is concerned that marketing companies will create an "ethnography bandwagon" and dilute the method the way they’ve diluted focus groups and surveys. The article does touch on that a bit:

"Practitioners caution that all the attention ethnography is getting could lead to a backlash. Many ethnographers already complain about poseurs flooding the field. Others gripe that corporations are hiring anthropologists to rubber-stamp boneheaded business plans."

But I also see this as an opportunity. While we are small in number, those of us who are not posers, who have studied the method, been formally trained and do know how to properly execute the method and extract valuable information from it will have greater opportunities. And that is promising. Some of us who are formally trained in ethnography can be found on the Yahoo! Anthro Design list. You can also find professional anthropologist, sometimes referred to as design researchers, at companies like Steelcase, IDEO and Intel.

Well, what is ethnography anyway? It sounds like such a cool word. When pitching the method to my clients, I describe ethnography as a fancy term for shadowing. In short, I’m going to follow you around for a day or two and observe you to better understand what you do, how you do it and how we can make your life better or easier. Clients seem to understand that description.

On a more academic level, ethnography is a holistic approach to research. Unlike other methods that tend to focus on a particular action, ethnography attempts to understand the action by looking at the entire system and environment that surrounds an action. If you want to truly understand how someone works and what influences their behaviors, ethnography is one of the few methods, if not only method, that can give you this insight. This excerpt from the Business Week article provides a good summary:

The beauty of ethnography, say its proponents, is that it provides a richer understanding of consumers than does traditional research. Yes, companies are still using focus groups, surveys, and demographic data to glean insights into the consumer’s mind. But closely observing people where they live and work, say executives, allows companies to zero in on their customers’ unarticulated desires. "It used be that design features were tacked on to the end of a marketing strategy," says Timothy deWaal Malefyt, an anthropologist who runs "cultural discovery" at ad firm BBDO Worldwide. "Now what differentiates products has to be baked in from the beginning. This makes anthropology far more valuable."

Now I would have said "design was tacked on to the end" instead of "design features," but that is due to my experience with business and marketing drumming up features. Designing a solution and coming up with features is not the same thing.

Probably one of the most interesting things to me about this Business Week article is the timing of it. I just returned from Overlap. One of the overarching questions during this weekend was "How can we get design(ers) in front of more business people and decisions makers?" Or put another way, "How can we get design(ers) in on the business discussions earlier?" Well, an article in Business Week on ethnography sure does help.