When is ethnography the best design research method?
Ethnography is the best research method to use when you need to discover the fundamental factors that influence the customer experience. Not the attributes of a given design, but the underlying framework that determines the quality of the customer or employee experience. Ethnography takes you to the source of the experience, and gives you tools to discover the most impactful factors. Another situation that Ethnography deals with especially well are when you are seeking innovative design solutions for daily life situations. Ethnography is a structured approach for leaving behind current solutions and going back to the life context that the design serves. Another situation in which ethnography is uniquely capable to provide answers is when the key concepts involved in an activity are not yet well defined or operational. For example, suppose we are trying to design a mobile app and one of the key success factors is convenience. Convenience is not a simple concept. It involves location and
