Ethnography is an umbrella term for understanding a group of people. There are many ways to do this so there are many techniques available.


  1. •Direct, first-hand observation of daily behaviour, including participant observation.

  2. •Various levels of conversation including chit-chat to in-depth interviews.

  3. •Researching local belief systems and religious influences.

  4. •Working directly with key community members who actively influence community life.

Users ultimately decide the success of a system design. Understanding users through the use of ethnography should be an ongoing evolutionary process throughout the life of a system, from concept generation to service expansion and adaptation.

Designer:


  1. •Vast amounts of empathetic and tacit knowledge regarding the decision making process

  2. •Justification for design decisions via an auditable trail of research

  3. •An in-depth approach to understanding users


User Group:


  1. •An opportunity to inform design without the need for prescriptive situations such as focus groups

  2. •Potentially unobtrusive gathering of influences

Ethnography links what people say to what they actually do. By monitoring either covertly or overtly a persons day-to-day activities it is possible to extract what drives them to act in a certain way or make a particular decision. This is useful to the design of products and services as we can start to predict customer behaviour.