Ethnographic Research

Ethnography is a valuable source of data for personas, scenarios, task analysis, requirements elicitation, and storyboards.

Ethnographic research involves the gathering information about users and tasks directly from users in their normal work, home or leisure environment. Although traditional ethnography focuses on long-term studies spanning weeks, months, or even years, information may be collected quickly through participant observation, interviews, audio or video recording, observer logs, artifact collection, diaries and photographs.

"User" is the primary element in User-Centered Design. Knowing how your users interact in the normal environment is crucial to understanding how they will interact with yours.

Ethnographic research employs three kinds of data collection:

  • interviews,
  • observation,
  • and documents.

These are interpreted to produce three kinds of data:

  • quotations,
  • descriptions,
  • and excerpts of documents

The final output of the ethnographic research is a narrative description.

For information about our Ethnographic research services or to schedule a meeting: