Ethnography is the structured study of people and cultures. It offers ways to better understand what is in the real world, the irrational behaviour of people and their preferences and is a way to deepen and enhance Design Thinking - across all industries and practices.

As digital agencies deal with AI commoditisation, introducing social sciences into the talent mix is key to defending value over price. Of course, design is eternally important to maintaining value, but introducing ethnography can lead to a real difference in the innovation process too.

The book Ethnographic Thinking: From Method to Mindset by Jay Hasbrouck, first published in 2018 by Routledge with a second edition released in 2024², offers a comprehensive guide for applying ethnographic principles to address real-world business and organisational challenges.

Ethnographic Thinking is akin to Design Thinking¹: both characterised by curiosity, holistic analysis, and heightened awareness as a powerful mindset that extends beyond traditional research to provide strategic value.

Being Ethnographic

Design Thinking integrates observation, collaboration, and iterative prototyping within a strategy, with the ultimate goal of refining and homing-in on a design solution - an inherently reductive  process. On the other hand, ethnographers are more inclined to open-up new frameworks and perspectives, in an effort to uncover the dynamics of social interactions and their formation. In short, ethnographers tend to ask 'why?', while designers aim mostly towards 'what?'.

This is throwing out a fundamental challenge here to deepen Design Thinking¹ with ethnography: adding 'why?' to 'what?'.

Being Curious

Somewhat more controversially, the book goes on to suggest that designers - e.g. user experience (UX) designers — when engaged to undertake user research - invariably leads to their findings being unquestionably adopted by teams building new products and services.

This implies that the questions posed by researcher are limited to comfortable questions, when in fact, what's needed is a focus on the uncomfortable questions. Ethnolgraphy asks not not just what consumers want, but why the organisation is solving for that particular challenge.

What business-oriented designers and managers need here is a pragmatic illustration of the real world difference between what comfortable and uncomfortable questions might be - in the context of their user research challenges. Perhaps the answer here is curiosity.

Being Aware

Ethnographers look beyond the obvious in their user research engagements. This recognises the complexity of observations and made up of many 'cues'. This competency requires 'visual literacy' and 'layered listening'. With layered listening this means searching for an 'internal voice' - the cultural meaning beyond the actual statements people make. This is 'detecting cues'.

When asking 'uncomfortable questions', what is 'sayable' and 'unsayable' is important to know. By being more 'context-aware', ethnographers discover hidden truths. In practice, this may be thought of as generating receptivity, which creates rapport and, in turn, this builds trust and truth.   

Being Patient

Ethnographers have open minds in observing and interpreting what may be regarded as everyday behaviours of say, consumers, or businesses. This is where people behaviours are better understood in any user research situation.

Here the ethnographer achieves a better awareness of the cultural differences of all stakeholders, when avoiding the 'confirmation bias' that reaffirms existing beliefs with narrow audiences, and instead, select a broader, more diversified group of stakeholders in user research engagements. Again, this points to applying more patience, taking more time - researching deeper and wider.

Being Adaptive

I see great parallels with the best approach taken by the true sales professional in new business development activities and ethnographers and designers. In borrowing from my own sales coaching and mentoring tools, this is the need to maximise empathy with the stakeholders engaged in the user research and related studies.

In the context of being more adaptive, whilst the ethnographer operates with structure and purpose, equally they need to ‘think on their feet’. This also means recognising 'spaces between' (what’s not explicitly said or recorded). As in sales, this creates a need to build sufficient trust from receptivity and rapport with stakeholders to go 'off-script' when surprising answers emerge.

As with sales people, this is where ethnographers practice great "participatory observations". This naturally leads to generating greater insights and revealing hidden truths. The ability to be adaptive, and adopt the right behaviours with each stakeholder - at the right time - is key to achieving success with ethnolography.

What comes to mind here is the concept of the 'agile ethnographer'.

Being Transparent

Ethnography is particular useful in understanding organisational behaviour. This is where participatory observations will expose informal and unspoken ways in which power flows through organisations. It is important being transparent about intent and purpose. Effectively, rthis means conferring trust in the stakeholders participating in the user research engagement.

There is the inherent advantage of informal networks, when identified through ethnography. This leads to faster 'organic' innovation - again, best served by the ethnographer being truly transparent with the stakeholders and participants in user research.

Being Structured

Ethnographers rely on a multiple of tools to record their work: audio and video, sketches, written notes, photos and maps - all contributing to the process. Today, you can add to this the role odf AI chatbots.

Here the ethnographer must interpret diverse, overlapping and sometimes, contradictory data.

Data collection in user research undertaken by the ethnographer means that they must see the relationships between these findings as 'expansive and networked' - not 'linear'. In practice, this means recognising patterns emerging from what initially appears to be very disjointed data.

Whilst structured, it is important to expose different points of view - and eventually, create a 'holistic' view.

Being Holistic

Ethnography means engaging in iterative storytelling, scribing and reviewing transcripts, diagramming and clustering - as the patterns and insights progressively emerged as the holistic view across the entire network, ecosystem or supply chain in question.

The result should be solution design that all stakeholders could relate to - recognising that each participant in the network, ecosystem or supply chain had started out with both differing and similar challenges or motivations.

Being Innovative

As everyone knows, 'Innovation' like Design Thinking is an 'in' topic for the business world today. But most organisations find it hard to move ideas beyond the 'lab' and into the marketplace. The problem here is usually a lack of Innovation Strategy, or interestingly, where such a strategy is not framed in cultural terms.

An Innovation Strategy informed by ethnolgraphy helps organisations communicate with internal audiences about how innovation initiatives align with their everyday practices, enhance their goals, and build on the organisation's core value propositions.

This also means identifying key alliances, to achieve clear channels of action, to avoid potential obstacles - and influence areas more open to change within the organisation.

Being Empathetic

With ethnographyI see the ultimate join with Design Thinking: Empathy. What's emphasised here in the book is the importance of empathetic storytelling with Ethnographic Thinking. This is step one in the five-step Design Thinking process advocated by the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University (d.school)¹.

Being Engaged

By being 'well-framed' ethnography and Design Thinking integrates all perspectives of a project: including ensuring the best outcomes for flows of influence, potential or current alliances engaged, and dealing with tensions and other dynamics at play.

In the Stanford d.school method, Ideate and Prototype phases of innovation work, designers and engineers tend to take on a more active role. During Ideation, Ethnography helps to prevent projects from narrowing too quickly, or rushing to 'solutionise' in ways that inadvertently prioritise personal judgements from members of the team. During Prototyping, ethnography adds value by ensuring that different models are testable to determine cultural fit.

Being Authentic

Ethnography is more than its stereotypical image of the study of ethnicity, of human 'tribes' and more towards a deeper exploration of people and their behaviours, and their preferences across much broader 'user persona' categorisations.

The role of the ethnographer - who asks 'why' - with the designer - who focuses on 'what' - suggests that these skills can be brought together. This might be a learning path for next generation user experience (UX) designers.

In digital innovation, and when trying to reach and retain the attention of customers, it is often the unspoken things that matter: maybe the 'atmosphere' generated by a particular brand. Do people think that a value proposition is 'for real'?

References

1. The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. (2004) Stanford d.school. https://dschool.stanford.edu/about
2. Hasbrouck, J. (2024). Ethnographic Thinking: From Method to Mindset. Routledge.
   https://www.routledge.com/Ethnographic-Thinking-From-Method-to-Mindset/Hasbrouck