| So what I'm going to talk about to you today is something called Ethnography. |
| This is a type of research aimed at exploring the way human cultures work. |
| It was first developed for use in anthropology, |
| and it's also been used in sociology and communication studies. |
| So what's it got to do with business, you may ask. |
| Well, businesses are finding that ethnography can offer them deeper insight into the possible needs of customers, |
| either present or future, |
| as well as providing valuable information about their attitudes towards existing products. |
| And ethnography can also help companies to design new products or services that customers really want. |
| Let's look at some examples of how ethnographic research works in business. |
| One team of researchers did a project for a company manufacturing kitchen equipment. |
| They watched how cooks used measuring cups to measure out things like sugar and flour. |
| They saw that the cooks had to check and recheck the contents, |
| because although the measuring cups had numbers inside them, |
| the cooks couldn't see these easily. |
| So a new design of cup was developed to overcome this problem, |
| and it was a top seller. |
| Another team of ethnographic researchers looked at how cell phones were used in Uganda, in Africa. |
| They found that people who didn't have their own phones could pay to use the phones of local entrepreneurs. |
| Because these customers paid in advance for their calls, |
| they were eager to know how much time they'd spent on the call so far. |
| So the phone company designed phones for use globally with this added feature. |
| Ethnographic research has also been carried out in computer companies. |
| In one company, IT systems administrators were observed for several weeks. |
| It was found that a large amount of their work involved communicating with colleagues in order to solve problems, |
| but that they didn't have a standard way of exchanging information from spreadsheets and so on. |
| So the team came up with an idea for software that would help them to do this. |
| In another piece of research, a team observed and talked to nurses working in hospitals. |
| This led to the recognition that the nurses needed to access the computer records of their patients, |
| no matter where they were. |
| This led to the development of a portable computer tablet |
| that allowed the nurses to check records in locations throughout the hospital. |
| Occasionally, research can be done even in environments where the researchers can't be present. |
| For example, in one project done for an airline, |
| respondents used their smartphones to record information during airline trips, |
| in a study aiming at tracking the emotions of passengers during a flight. |
| So what makes studies like these different from ordinary research? |
| Let's look at some of the general principles behind ethnographic research in business. |
| First of all, the researcher has to be completely open-minded - |
| he or she hasn't thought up a hypothesis to be tested, as is the case in other types of research. |
| Instead they wait for the participants in the research to inform them. |
| As far as choosing the participants themselves is concerned, |
| that's not really all that different from ordinary research - |
| the criteria according to which the participants are chosen may be something as simple as the age bracket they fall into, |
| or the researchers may select them according to their income, |
| or they might try to find a set of people who all use a particular product, for example. |
| But it's absolutely crucial to recruit the right people as participants. |
| As well as the criteria I've mentioned, |
| they have to be comfortable talking about themselves |
| and being watched as they go about their activities. |
| Actually, most researchers say that people open up pretty easily, |
| maybe because they're often in their own home or workplace. |
| So what makes this type of research special is that it's not just a matter of sending a questionnaire to the participants, |
| instead the research is usually based on first-hand observation of what they are doing at the time. |
| But that doesn't mean that the researcher never talks to the participants. |
| However, unlike in traditional research, |
| in this case it's the participant rather than the researchers |
| who decides what direction the interview will follow. |
| This means that there's less likelihood of the researcher imposing his or her own ideas on the participant. |
| But after they've said goodbye to their participants and got back to their office, |
| the researchers' work isn't finished. |
| Most researchers estimate that 70 to 80 percent of their time is spent not on the collecting of data but on its analysis - |
| looking at photos listening to recordings and transcribing them and so on. |
| The researchers may end up with hundreds of pages of notes. |
| And to determine what's significant, they don't focus on the sensational things or the unusual things, |
| instead they try to identify a pattern of some sort in all this data, |
| and to discern the meaning behind it. |
| This can result in some compelling insights that can in turn feed back to the whole design process. |