Ethnographic research involves the study of people and groups as they go about their everyday lives.  The ethnographer participates in daily routines within the context of the research setting, observes what is going on and systematically records his or her experiences and thoughts. Participation based on social and physical proximity is key to this process.

Flow frequently uses ethnographic research methods to gain a deep understanding of the social and working lives of people who use different products and services in different contexts. The findings provide richer insights into service and product design requirements and opportunities for innovation, particularly when designing for global and multi-cultural audiences.

One of the key questions around ethnographic research is how its findings are transformed into design. One example of such a process was presented at a recent UX Brighton: ‘A Journey from Ethnography to Design’. The event included two speakers: Simon Johnson, User Experience Consultant at Flow and Miles Rochford from Nokia. Simon spoke about the ethnographic research and subsequent design that he completed for the Environment Agency. Miles’ presentation focused on using ethnography to design products for emerging markets.

The Environment Agency commissioned Flow to conduct contextual research and subsequently design an interactive map that will provide users with coastal erosion information – a national project that will affect 2.1 million houses on the coast. The key objectives were to establish what an erosion map should look like, how it should work and what sort of information should accompany the map.

Claire Mitchell, Flow’s Principal Consultant on the project and Simon started the project with a research phase that included ethnographic field observations in two coastal settings: Norfolk and Hastings. Simon spent two weeks documenting the lives of coastal communities, interviewing local people and immersing himself in their lives. Additionally, Simon interviewed eight professionals at Flow’s experience labs in London.

Ethnography enabled Simon to apply his empathy and humanistic values to drive the project. It was clear that his findings provided the Environment Agency with a rich understanding of the concerns, information needs and myths that people who live in rural coastal communities might have. Simon described how his research findings confirmed some of EA's current thinking, provided new insights and defined the subsequent design process and deliverables.

The research that Claire and Simon conducted described how emotive the coastline is, an institution in British history that invokes strong feelings and forms a strong part of a shared heritage. The implications were the need for the Environment Agency to communicate that it cares and to reassure people that action was being taken to protect the coast. It was also clear that people trust locals and distrust central government, erosion maps caused alarm and that a certain amount of local knowledge derived from  ignorance and/or myth. An example of a myth was the commonly repeated argument that the government was making money dredging ‘their’ sand.

The design approach focused on a simple website that addresses the needs of both professionals and locals. Claire and Simon decided that the design should answer core questions and myths, stick to plain English, use local materials and represent risks  without alarming local people.

Is it Ethnography?
After the presentation the audience participated in a lively debate, which had a particular focus on the true meaning of ethnography. For some designers ethnography was a new concept and their reactions during the Q&A sessions and after the presentations indicated that they found both Simon and Miles’ presentations truly thought provoking. Some felt that rapid ethnography with a specific structure and design agenda was different from “ethnography” and needed a new term associated to it.

Theoretical research has two main aims – the validation of existing knowledge and the acquisition of new knowledge. Flow uses research to acquire and validate specific knowledge, the context in which services and products are used.  Flow uses principles and techniques taken from social sciences such as sociology, anthropology and psychology to inform design decisions. Our main aim is to design solutions that work outside of design studios, laboratories and meeting rooms. As a result, we often use appropriate research techniques to focus on specifically targeted contexts and activities. A term that is often used to describe this work is Design Ethnography.

Simon's presentation

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Many thanks to Danny Hope and former Flow Consultant Harry Brignull for organising the event.

--Ofer Deshe

Flow, together with Splendid, designed Jamie Oliver's new Jme lifestyle collection website. It was a classic user experience challenge, but this one went further. We soon discovered that the best approach was to integrate the shop with Jamie's already active community site.

Understanding the fans

Jamie Oliver fans like relaxed living and eating with an edge of no-nonsense practicality. They care about the environment they live in and about supporting people who make the food and products they love.

What does that mean for online shopping? We created a hypothesis. Jamie Oliver fans would want:

• Inspiration: How to mix and match products, recipes and ideas so they can live the Jamie lifestyle
• Usefulness: Understanding how products would fit into their lives and help them achieve their goals (a great dinner party, a beautiful home, and flourishing garden...)
• Background and context: Insight into where the products come from, who designs and makes them and why they are special
• Connectedness: Helping customers to form a connection to the community, the product designer and Jamie.

When we considered this, we realised that the Jme site should be integrated with JamieOliver.com, Jamie Oliver's existing blog and community site. Inspiration might come from seeing a photo of a family gathering where a delicious risotto is served in a beautiful bowl. From there, visitors should be able to find out about the bowl and its designer, get the recipe and buy the bowl.

Mapping and testing the site

To understand how the different content should cross-link we created a wall chart. We identified silos, such as recipes, products and forum posts and connected them with arrows. (Jamie came in to see it. He liked it a lot. He's a nice bloke.)

From there, we created a wireframe prototype to represent these ideas ready for testing with users. The most successful website wireframes tend to contain "real fake content" - lorem ipsum doesn't give users a real feel of what the final experience will be like. These wireframes had to contain a lot of visual imagery showing example products, people and situations where they might be used.

User feedback told us two things:

Firstly, we needed to keep our feet on the ground. If you're going to show a desirable bowl customers will soon need to find links to the plate, side plate and coffee cups that match. It also reminded us that you can never be too clear about practicalities like delivery information, pricing and the checkout process.

Secondly, the connected, contextual, useful and inspirational idea made for a great user experience. Jamie Oliver fans loved to use it. And it provides the kind of rich information and emotional content that people need to help them make purchase decisions.

Take a look at Jme

The site is quickly growing into its new home. It's got genuinely fabulous kitchen and dining room stuff, herbs, books and DVDs - all selected by Jamie himself. There are lots more products, recipes and articles coming on all the time. We think it's great to look at and delightful to use.

As Jamie would say: "Nice one!"

Team: Peter Otto, Genevieve Chapman (Splendid), Simon Parbutt (Splendid)

On Thursday evening, 19th February 2009, I was privileged to be at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London for the HSBC Rail Business Awards to co-receive the Information Technology Excellence of the Year Award for the new National Express East Coast (NXEC) booking engine and website.

As any of you reading this who have used the NXEC booking engine know, it dramatically simplifies the process of finding and buying rail tickets online...not just on NXEC routes, but for any train in the UK.  We have blogged before about the intuitive user interface and its cutting edge use of AJAX technology as well as the positive customer feedback and improved business results for NXEC before.

We (and NXEC) have also received lots of accolades from customers and the industry about how great the new booking engine is.  So it fills us with a great sense of pride and accomplishment to receive this well-deserved acknowledgement from the Rail Industry for all the creativity and teamwork that went into making it happen.

It has been a long road, but the hard work and effort has paid off, not just because we won this award, but because we succeeded in creating a first-of-its-kind, innovative and successful new booking engine for trains that will set the standard for all that follow, in terms of business performance, ease of use and customer satisfaction. It is also a clear demonstration of how User-Centred Design makes a tangible difference to customers and business.

I just want to take a moment to thank the entire NXEC team from Flow:  Simon Hatch, Alejandra Obregon, Martina Schell and Kelsey Smith; our partners at Splendid: Paul Bishop, Simon Parbutt, Alistair Thomson and Karl Wortmann; the team at Atos Origin who built it:  Graham Bodman, Richard Phillpot, Ian Collier, Eleanor Waldron and Chris Rees; and the team at Tullo Marshall Warren (TMW) for bringing the marketing website together.

But perhaps most importantly, I want to thank Emma Passey and the entire NXEC team for their vision, passion and perseverance.  We couldn't have done it without you!

Congratulations to everyone. A well deserved award!

- Ian Worley, Director of User Experience at Flow Interactive

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Download Case Studies about this project:

• National Express East Coast Booking Engine Case Study (78k .pdf)
• National Express East Coast Website Case Study (92k .pdf)

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The BBC used ethnographic research to inspire and inform their Audio & Music team, as they design new services for young people aged 13-18.

How do young people find new music? What do they do with it? What technology gets used and why? Rather than statistics or abstract trend statements, the BBC Future Media and Technology department wanted vivid examples and concrete insights about the user base they were designing for. They asked Flow to help them.

Learning about people's lives

We worked with four different target groups, which we named The Gamers, The Streetwise Teens, The Social DJs and the Indie Teens. Each group had three members – all close friends with each other.

We worked through 4 activities with them over the course of a few weeks:

• Group sessions
• Diaries
• Shadowing
• Follow-up interviews

Shadowing means spending time participating in each person’s day-to-day life. Our ethnographers enjoyed a night out in Camden with two 18 year-olds, some live gaming on the Xbox with a 14 year-old boy in his bedroom, gossiping with two 16 year-old girls at their home and a lesson about hip-hop dance from a 17 year-old dancer. The insights from experiences like this go much deeper than surveys and focus groups ever can.

Sharing what we learned

We had workshops with the BBC team all the way through the project. This let the team hear discoveries "as they happened" and be inspired to ask new questions. The research team were about to direct their enquiry towards the areas which our clients thought looked the most fruitful.

The final results were written up in a highly-visual, 80-page book. The goal was for people all over the BBC to engage with the study so we made sure that the results were presented in an interesting and visual way. The report was publicised in Ariel, the BBC’s internal newspaper.

Observations

I asked Jude Rattle, the lead consultant on the project, what she had learned from the study. “All sorts of things that you can’t mention in a blog post,” she told me. “But a few that you can.”

“Sharing music with friends is an important social activity. In the 70s and 80s young people made mix tapes. Now MP3s get swapped from phone to phone whenever people feel like it. But there’s a twist. The DRM mechanisms designed to stop digital piracy also stop people from engaging in that key social behaviour. So a lot of our participants had an added incentive to seek out pirate MP3s on Limewire: the file they got would be readily shareable.”

“People often think that young people are universally brilliant with technology, but they are not. In our study we found that teens will go to great lengths to use technology that does things that are important for them. But there are other things that older users might take for granted, which teens don’t know how to do. For example, some of our participants did not know how to burn a CD, even though they did know how to copy an MP3 onto a mobile phone’s memory card or Bluetooth it to a friend.”

Giving innovators an edge

Imagining the future is hard. Designing future products and services that will be discovered and adopted is harder still. In large organisations, design teams can easily become far removed from the people they are designing for. To stand a chance, they must have rich detail about what their target users actually do, what they like and what they need.

Ethnography helped the BBC to connect with teenagers as they consume music – and gave them practical insights that they can use as a basis for innovation.

Seedcamp is a week-long event where young entrepreneurs come together with advisors and investors to put together viable start-up businesses. Flow will be there to provide user experience advice to the teams.

Venture capitalists know a thing or two about investments. Which is why user experience is one of the factors involved in seedcamp. For interactive projects, user-centred design reduces risk and increases returns.

User centred design techniques dramatically reduce the risks associated with innovating and launching new products. After all, if you've worked with your target users throughout the design process, you should feel pretty comfortable that you've made something your customers will buy.

As well as reducing risk, designing a good user experience boosts returns.The effort and money you put into research, concept and design will be paid back many times over through increased conversion and usage, a stronger brand and reduced customer acquisition costs.

Some of the literature quotes typical returns on investment at several hundred percent. It's entirely believable. In some situations, a simple usability test, or a piece of insight from the field, can prevent a key problem that would stop users from adopting an new interactive product.

Shrink to fit

Start-up ventures don't have much to invest. That's ok: the process doesn't have to be difficult or expensive. User-centred design techniques shrink to fit. You can perform basic user research with friends and family. Sketch prototypes are easy to create with just a pen and paper. You can perform rapid iterative usability tests in just a few days. When Flow worked with Moo Print during its start-up phase, the team powered through five design iterations in a week.

The point is though, that like any investment if you put nothing in, you'll get nothing back.

So here's our investment advice for all 22 teams at seedcamp. Focus on understanding your users' needs, motivations and real-world behaviours. Then use your insights to help you design and deliver the right user experience. Payback won't be far behind.

Observing target customers in their homes or while they shop can provide the insights you need to build a better website - and a better multichannel experience.

I wrote this article about cross-channel ethnography for Internet Retailing Magazine earlier this year. I'll be talking about this topic at the Internet Retailing event in October.

Insight to innovation: The power of cross-channel ethnography

When Bronislaw Malinowski decided to study the habits and culture of the natives of the Trobriand Islands in the South Pacific during his exile in the First World War, little could he have imagined that the techniques he developed to learn about other cultures would be used to revolutionise the marketing and sales of consumer goods and services. However, this is exactly what is happening.

Ethnography, once confined to academic research departments has, over the last 20-30 years, become a widely used and powerful research technique for companies seeking to improve how they market and sell to customers. They have even turned the lens on themselves to improve how they manage their own businesses.

More recently, the desire to provide compelling multi-channel customer experiences that lure customers away from competitors has become the holy grail for many retailers. However, there is a noticeable gap between the precision with which research is used to understand customer behaviour offline and how it is applied in the design of online stores.

This gap is closing, however. As online retailing enters the mainstream, multi-channel retailers are investing more to improve the quality and effectiveness of their online stores. They are also looking for ways to build customer loyalty in a world where technology is making customers more and more promiscuous. Cross-channel ethnography is one of the tools retailers are turning to for insight.

The trouble with websites...

"Well, I can't really tell what the phone looks like from the picture...", said Katie, a participant in a recent usability study for one of the UK's leading mobile operators. "I would go to a shop at this point, before I make a decision".

From a research point of view, this is not surprising behaviour. It has long been understood that ... Read more

Freemans has launched its new website, delivering a state-of-the-art online customer experience. Flow was pleased and proud to help them on the project.

Freemans understood that the right user experience would increase visits, sales and repeat business. But to deliver those benefits with minimal risk you need a user-centred design process. So we started our engagement with Freemans by creating a user-centred design project plan, then got started on the first step - research.

Research

Paul Heath was Flow's lead consultant on the project. I asked him about the research phase. "The research told us what users think and feel, and the kinds of experiences they encounter when they are shopping online and offline. We also undertook a competitive analysis of the fashion sector and an expert evaluation of the Freemans site."

"All of this data let us understand and priotitise the project requirements effectively. But it also let us innovate new ways for customers to interact with the site. During the concept phase, our understanding of our customers' ideal shopping experience let us create... Read more

Flow helped the Training and Development Agency to build a user experience roadmap for their website and create a user experience scorecard for measuring its success.

Ethnographic approaches, such as contextual enquiry and experience labs, help organisations understand their target customers needs, behaviours and motivations. To get really insightful discoveries, researchers immerse themselves as deeply as possible in the lives or jobs of a limited sample of target users and try to discover what those people really think and need.

On the other end of the spectrum lies automated quantitative usability testing. Here you never see your users at all. But you get accurate measurements of how successful they are at achieving key tasks on your site. Gaining a quantitative understanding of your website's performance lets you chart your site's improvement over time, and identify where it could be performing better.

Ethnographic techniques tell you what your users want to do. Quantitative testing tells you how many of them are managing to do it.

And often, successful UX strategies will combine the two. Our project for the TDA did.

Building a UX strategy for the TDA

We began by conducting contextual research with people from the TDA's 7 target user groups - including teachers, support staff and school leaders. We gathered stories of actual experiences that they had lived through, and the sequences of activities they had engaged in. We also played some simple participatory design games with them to bring out ideas for the "ideal" TDA website.

With a separate sample, we usability tested the existing website. Using a huge quantity of sticky notes, the researchers put all the data together and analysed it. They uncovered a selection of 70-80 tasks that the different target groups needed to perform on the website. (We also discovered that there were really only 4 groups with different needs, rather than 7).

Next came a "task matrix". For each task, we identified:

• The audiences who do it
• Related tasks or sub tasks
• Triggers that cause someone to engage in the task at a certain point (events like assessments, deadlines, changes in staff)
• Target web pages where useful information would be found.

Straight away, this let us see where there were improvements to be made. If we struggled to find suitable target pages, or if the information or findability of a target page seemed poor, we knew we had an opportunity to improve things.

To take us beyond expert opinion, we also used the TDA's web analytics data. We checked how many people were visiting each target page, and assessed that figure in relation to task importance and audience group size. That gave us additional evidence about whether pages we easy to find or not.

Finally, we worked with stakeholders to assess the effort needed to improve the website for each task. Plotting each task on a chart of priority versus effort (for users and for the organisation) gave us a solid roadmap: small, high-value changes first; larger changes later.

User experience scorecard

To make it easier to measure and chart improvement in the site's UX, we set up a user experience scorecard using UserZoom.

UserZoom performs automated remote usability testing. It asks a quantitative sample of target users to try doing certain tasks, gathers clickstream data and quizzes them to check comprehension and attitude. The scorecard treats user tasks as key performance indicators of the site's user experience. The TDA is running benchmark UserZoom studies every six months, and the results are being fed onto an interactive dashboard.

The scorecard will help the TDA team to monitor the impact on the user experience as they work through the steps on their UX roadmap.

Flow's team: Mary Henley, Anthony Mace, Claire Mitchell, Leisa Reichelt, Sarah Herman, Pav Chahal, Nick Bowmast, Vanessa Kirby, conducted the research. Karen Wall looked after the client relationship.

The Transport for London website team's dedication to user centred design has helped make their site a leader in the public sector.

A recent report from the Public Accounts Committee has been critical of the way that UK government websites are designed and managed. But TfL.gov.uk, the Transport for London website, was one of the few cited for good practice and performance. It's no real surprise: the TfL team really understand the value of listening to customers, and designing for their needs.

Sometimes, we're pleased to say, TfL hire Flow to help them.

What London travellers really need

TFL's flagship offering is Journey Planner. Back in 2006, we helped TFL research and design the mobile travel alerts element of the service. Designing personalisation features for a website is never easy - because most of the time, people don't want to personalise. We all just want the website to do what we need with minimal effort.

Flow ran experience labs: one-to-one sessions with a range of different people. The lab sessions focussed on digging out the reality of London travellers' needs, motivations and behaviours.

A key technique was retrospective accounts: we gathered detailed stories about what people really did in specific situations. So rather than asking "what do you think about travel in London" we asked things like "Tell me how you got to this interview today," and "tell me about the last time something went wrong with your commute to work." To keep the conversation fun and manageable, we also collaborated with the respondents to create pictures, lists and timelines using sticky notes and marker pens.

Once we understood user needs, we could identify a service that people would really like. The travel alerts system lets you identify the routes you are interested in (typically the ones you commute on every day), and get travel alerts for those routes at specific times. We defined the concept, worked with TFL to create wireframes, then fine tuned them with two iterations of usability testing.

TfL personalised travel alerts: Prototype and live site.

Practical commitment to customers

Since then we've helped TfL research and optimise all sorts of things from the Oyster Fastload process to the London Transport museum website. And since communicating with travellers is a multichannel activity we've even run iterative usability testing in London Underground stations - quite a challenge.

Now approaching...

Flow is now working with TfL on a strategic project to map out the future for the website, and we're basing the process on user research.

To improve on the experience labs methodology, we're asking our research subjects to fill in diaries. We're catching reports of travel experiences while people are travelling, then following up on the details in the lab afterwards. From there we'll be using a scenario-based approach to map out what people's travel experience and identify the TfL website's optimal role.

The finished site will offer London's travellers an even more useful, usable and appealing travel experience.

We were excited to hear the that the National Express East Coast website has been short-listed for the National Transport Awards. We have to wait until July to find out if we've won though.

Flow worked Atos Origin and Splendid on the project. We know customers love it - let's hope the judges do too.