Closing the gap
Ethnography has long helped firms get closer to their customers – it could prove a vital tool for policymakers too, say Chris Cox and Joe Manning.
The mystery of Easter Island has long puzzled historians. Alone in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, it remains home to giant stone statues while the civilisation that erected them has all but vanished. It’s been suggested that the islander’s demise was due to the destruction of their fragile ecosystem – tragically, by their own hands. To build great statues they had to chop down a forest, triggering soil erosion which led crop yields to plummet. While erecting testaments to the greatness of their civilisation, the islanders destroyed the means required for their survival. In other words, the Easter Islanders didn’t consider their actions holistically. If they had they might have pulled themselves back from the brink of destruction, having spotted that policies can have unintended consequences. To use economic terms, the islander’s demise was the ultimate negative externality.
Today, many would argue that similar scenarios are being repeated around the world. We may have more data on our changing environments – ecological, political, and otherwise – but socially our behaviours often still pull in the opposite direction. For example, the UK has tough targets to meet on carbon emissions, reducing them 80 per cent by 2050. But although households contribute more than a quarter of our greenhouse gases, the reality is that most homeowners aren’t engaged by environmental issues. The number of people embarking on loft and cavity wall insulations is still far too low. We need to understand all the possible reasons for this, from financial through to emotional, before we can make progress.
Now more than ever, these gaps in our understanding need closing. To do this we need to look at the human reality in the middle – which is where ethnography could help.
A thick description
Ethnography is a research method which underpins social and cultural anthropology. It deals with the description of human cultures. In its purest academic form, ethnographers live among the people they are studying for anything up to eighteen months. They observe and participate in daily life, recording copious notes which are later turned into a written narrative. (Ethnography literally means ‘people writing’.) The aim is to produce what the famous ethnographer Clifford Geertz called “a thick description” of a culture or community.
But ethnographers are increasingly found outside academia. Innovative organisations have been enlisting ethnographers since the 1930s to generate deeper insights into their customer’s attitudes and desires. More recently, firms such as such as Intel and Proctor and Gamble have established in-house ethnography teams to underpin their research and design functions, putting human insight at the heart of their innovation processes. In the public sector, ethnographers are also making inroads, helping to redesign services around the needs of those who use them.
Deborah Szbeko, founder of service design agency thinkpublic, says that the difference between ‘pure’ and commercial ethnography is that the latter starts with an idea of what needs to be observed – often provided by the client – rather than analysing a whole culture from scratch. And the timescales are naturally shorter: most clients would balk at funding eighteen months of ethnography. However, Szbeko says that the same rigour can be applied even in short timeframes, and insights can be generated rapidly using a range of techniques – including film, photography, interviews, on-site co-design, discourse analysis and journey mapping.
The aim is to create a holistic understanding of people’s experience, according to John Curran, co-founder with Matt Pattison of “people-centred” innovation consultancy Matt + John. When researching patient experiences in hospital, Curran’s team focus not only on the perspective of the patient, but also the carer, the clinical team, the hospital manager, and even the cleaner. They explore how the space and design of the hospital influence the patient, from lighting to acoustics and from staff dynamics to systemic issues. “At every stage we are creating a cultural and behavioural understanding of what it is to be a patient,” says Curran.
Platforms for innovation
Traditional research methods such as market research are often used by organisations to confirm what they already expected their customers were thinking. Simon Roberts, head of Intel’s social science and design research team, argues that by contrast, ethnography generates often unexpected insights which provide a whole platform for innovation. “Market research tends to be about validation rather than inspiration,” he says. This is fine when nothing particularly new is required: if you want evolution rather than revolution, then market research can be very effective. But when it comes to identifying opportunities for innovation, exploring what clients and customers actually need – rather than simply what they say they need – becomes much more important.
By using ethnography, the Bank of America uncovered an insight that allowed them to help mothers save money without the stress of counting dimes and nickels. After a team of ethnographers followed them around for several weeks, they realised a debit card which rounded up purchases and dropped the change into another account would help them save without thinking about saving. The Keep the Change scheme is now helping millions to start saving money, and has cracked the bank’s problem of boosting new accounts.
Leading nappy manufacturer Kimberly Clark also revealed radical insights through ethnography. With sales stalling on their ‘new and improved leak-free diapers’, they discovered that parents were more concerned about the role of potty-training as part of the story of childhood development than with the science keeping their children’s bottoms dry. In response they developed Huggies Pull-Ups, disposable training pants that currently lead the market. Without ethnography, a whole human story would have been missed – and with it an opportunity for innovation.
Online social networks provide another space for ethnographers to explore meaning and connection. Campbell’s Soup Company used ‘netnography’ to uncover a lively online community that not only enjoyed sharing recipes but was founded on deep personal trust and familiarity. On the back of this research the company’s website - Campbell’s Kitchen - was redesigned, and unique monthly visitors shot up from 120,000 before the main relaunch in October 2008, to more than 1 million by January 2009. Campbell’s is now able to better understand and respond to specific consumer demand.
Making changes
Despite these successes, ethnographers are still regularly challenged by the question of how findings from small, localised studies can be delivered on a larger scale – particularly in the public sector. Clients can also struggle to understand how such in-depth insights can be implemented. After all, everyone can have bright ideas; making them happen is something very different. Curran explains that clients who realize the importance of innovating to stay competitive often need initial reassurance of the potential outcomes and cost benefits of ethnography. “It’s when they see how ethnography underpins the whole innovation process that they see how it informs new thinking and strategy.”
A shift in mindset is needed. Partnerships between ethnographers, designers, business people and policymakers are required, with financial constraints introduced early into the research and development phase. In the public sector, there are signs this is starting to take place. “More of our clients are saying, how do we speed this part up, how do we use insights and create useable outcomes,” says Szbeko. “People have got to deliver stuff now, they can’t just talk about it; they need to make the changes.”
Ivo Gormley, head of media at thinkpublic, has found that those on the front line of public services enjoy using new tools to think critically about their work. He also believes there is a place for ethnography in realising the ‘big society’ vision. “We’ve been talking about co-production and using front-line staff for a very long time. I think our ideas have been influential in forming what is now called the big society – and I think it can only be good for us to have that kind of policy- level support.”
Curran agrees that ethnography can play a role in not only identifying needs but in helping to change them. Communities are experts in their lived experience, he says, but they need support to learn about themselves, taking a reflective approach so as to co-design better solutions and services.
Ethnography can enable this reflection by defining complex problems in ways that people can quickly understand. The American sociologist Susan Newman argues that what sets ethnography apart from other social sciences is that it can define complex problems in ways that people can quickly understand. She has said a crucial value of ethnography in the public realm is its capacity to communicate through powerful narrative. “Ethnography has the capacity to connect with the public, with students, and even with politicians – even with people who run NASA – because they can actually understand it.” Ethnography is singular in showing that social sciences have an enormous power “to capture a reality that matters, that helps explain things that people find puzzling.”
Closing the gaps
People indulge themselves and go easy on the exercise, but the public health impact is placing strains on national health services that we can no longer afford. Governments pursue economic growth for many positive reasons, but the effect on the environment has been catastrophic. The work of ethnographers demonstrates the importance of the cultural lens through which we all see and filter empirical data – the value of loft insulation, the necessity of nappies for toddlers or the relative social significance of giant stone statues. Indeed, it shows that culture is often prior to facts in individual and group decision making; the importance of this insight to policy makers should not be understated. The gaps are widening, but we have the means to close them. As Curran puts it, “It’s about understanding the narratives of people and groups. It goes beyond understanding what people do – to understanding why they do what they do.”
Chris Cox and Joe Manning are Policy Advisors at the Design Council.