The explosion of design research projects since the 80s has popularized ethnography as a phrase that gets bandied about as a short hand term for defining any research project that looks for insight based on empathetic methods as opposed to quantitative analysis or its poor relations such as focus groups or surveys.

I hear it used in marketing conversations all the time now, as well as in the world of interactive strategy. It verges on being a buzzword.

It is invariably closely followed by a conversation about the validity of its insight due to the smaller group of research subjects than quantitative methods employ.

There are many designers and researchers who feel that there is little to debate about categorizing the nature of this project. Its Design Research; there are so many practitioners of this sort of project it seems odd to me that some would feel the need to make up new definitions.

My two pence worth is that we can call it what we like, indeed, we may have to call it different things for different audiences. The meaning of the words you use depends on the context and the audience. I would describe our work differently according to whether I were speaking to Anthropologists or Designers, or business people.

I like field work though. It's simple and retains an echo of anthropology. Nice one, Simon.

Is this possible in the short two weeks that Simon spent doing the research. Malinowski stated that it was important for the researcher to go through stages, starting off with the familiar, through to strange and diverse. Malinowski compared it to like learning a foreign language. At first crude translation and assimilation through to complete detachment from the original. Is this possible in one to two weeks?

So Simon I agree with you that using the word 'field work' would be better as it is both simpler and we do not get into methodology twist.

Should we start a campaign to use plain words for usability?

At the beginning of your presentation you humbly state that you're not an expert and haven't been doing 'this' very long.
...I disagree.

As a lifestyle experiment I moved to a small coastal village. Population 200.

I quickly learned that if you want to know anything about any of the locals, what their issues are and who's sleeping with who...
...go hang out with Dennis, the guy who runs the store.

Ethnography / field work, whatever you call it, starts with building empathy, getting up close and personal ...getting the dirt.

For four years you ran a local newsagent in Buckinghamshire and in this time I'd imagine you perfected your ethnography skills without knowing it.

Mixing those skills with your ability to tell stories definitely puts you in the expert category.

--Nick

We use the word 'ethnography' as it best describes our field work.

We should question if this term is misleading or unhelpful. Personally I think we should describe our studies as 'field work' as I am a fan of plain speech. However, ethnographic research is a broad term that enjoys a wide range of uses....

The ethnographical method is used across a range of different disciples, primarily by anthropologists but also frequently by sociologists. Cultural studies, economics, social work, education, ethnomusicology, folklore, geography, linguistics, performance studies and psychology are other fields which have made use of ethnography.

Ethnography (Greek ἔθνος ethnos = folk/people and γράφειν graphein = writing) is a methodological strategy used to provide descriptions of human societies, which as a methodology does not prescribe any particular method (e.g. observation, interview, questionnaire), but instead prescribes the nature of the study (i.e. to describe people through writing) [1]. In the biological sciences, this type of study might be called a "field study" or a "case report," both of which are used as common synonyms for "ethnography"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnography