Ethnography (and not Organic Chemistry): 5 Take-Aways

Here’s another blow for liberal arts majors in business.

Remember that semester when you skipped organic chemistry to take something called ethnography, and your parents called to ask what you were spending their hard-earned money on and you couldn’t exactly explain?

Time to call you parents back. It turns out you knew exactly what you were doing.

This month’s Hemisphere magazine from United Airlines describes marketing folks at OXO International attempting to design a new measuring cup. Like most good marketing organizations, they asked consumers how they used the product and discovered that most people were worried about the cup becoming too hot, or dropping and breaking it.

Good information, right?

But when they actually watched users, here’s what happened: “Everyone would place the cup on a counter, partially fill it, check the amount, pour a bit more, and repeat until they had the proper amount.” Based on those observations, OXO designed a cup whose calibrations can be read from the top.

Alex Lee, the OXO president, said, “It was a clear demonstration that the latent needs people don’t tell us about are more valuable than what they do tell.”

This is a little like asking, if you wanted to learn to defend yourself against a Bengal tiger in the wild, would you chat with one in a zoo, or would you watch a National Geographic special?

Right. And the answer is: Go for a bike ride, cause there is no defense against a Bengal tiger in the wild.

(Kind of looks like your father's face when you told him you were taking a pass on organic chemistry, eh?)

Webster defines ethnography as “the study and systematic recording of human cultures.” When applied to marketing, here are 5 take-aways:
1. True ethnographic research meets several criteria. First, the observer must “be in the moment of context when the action is occurring,” says Melinda Rea-Holloway, the president of Ethnographic Research in Kansas City, Missouri. Rather than ask consumers what they had for dinner, the researchers watch them prepare and eat it. Interviews also can be part of the research, Rea-Holloway says. However, the participant, not the interviewer, guides the conversation. Equally important, the research is inductive, rather than leading. “We start without a hypothesis,” Rea-Holloway says. “We assume we don’t know the answer and let the participants guide us to an understanding.”

2. Ethnographic research can be key when designing products for emerging markets, where consumers might use products differently from consumers in developed countries.

3. In addition to helping with the development of products, ethnography also can be used to direct corporate strategy, says Ken Anderson of the people and practices research group at Intel Corporation. Anderson oversees the innovation team within the digital health group at Intel. “It’s not about developing a particular product, but opening a space that had been untapped,” he says.

That’s not to say the insight that Anderson and his team provide won’t ultimately result in new products. For example, another team’s observations of and conversations with hundreds of nurses led to the recognition of their need to access patient information no matter where on the hospital floor they were. With this in mind, earlier this year Intel introduced the mobile clinical assistant. This portable tablet computer lets nurses handle a variety of tasks, such as checking patient records, while they are moving about the floor.

4. One variant is known as 360-degree ethnography, says Erica Rutt, a vice president and partner at Insight Research Group. In this method, researchers talk not only to the participant but also to several other members of his or her family or workplace. “You can dig deeper,” says Rutt. Occasionally, studies can be done even in environments where researchers cannot be present. In one project, respondents record their feelings on Blackberries at various points during airline trips. The goal is to track their emotions throughout their journeys.

5. To determine which observations are significant, the researchers focus not on the sensational but on the patterns that appear. Their goal is to find the actions that are common across many participants and discern their meaning. The insight that results can be compelling. “When it’s done right,” says Chipchase, “ethnography can inform and inspire the design process.”
Now, that's something organic chemistry cannot do. And that’s something your parents need to hear about today. Good luck.

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations