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“We cannot create observers by saying ‘observe’, but by giving them the power and the means for this observation and these means are procured through education of the senses.”

- Maria Montessori

Since the 1960s, businesses have tapped on ethnographers to understand their customers better. By the turn of this century, the use of ethnography has not only tipped but has even passed the tipping point. Nowadays ethnographers are used across industries by companies like Intel Inc in the high-tech field to furniture makers like Steelcase Inc.

“The beauty of ethnography, say its proponents, is that it provides a richer understanding of consumers than does traditional research. Yes, companies are still using focus groups, surveys, and demographic data to glean insights into the consumer's mind. But closely observing people where they live and work, say executives, allows companies to zero in on their customers' unarticulated desires.”1

But what if your organization does not have the capability to put together a team of ethnographers to help gather

unarticulated desires and inspirational points for your next new product or service? What if you are a small- or medium- enterprise that does not have the resources to employ ethnographers? What if ethnographers are hard to come by as it is here in Malaysia? Is all hope lost? Should you give up trying to learn what your customers’ unarticulated desires or needs are?

Of course you shouldn’t give up! I say if you don’t have a team of ethnographers to send out into the world, send out your engineers, designers, marketers, technologists, and receptionists. Let them go out into the world and observe for your organization. Let them be your organization’s eyes and ears, very much like what Second Curve does. Second Curve is a hedge fund company that manages hundreds of millions of dollars by making big, long-term bets on the stocks of banks and financial services companies.

The HuntBy Andrew Tan

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Once a year, Second Curve organizes what they call a “branch hunt”. During the branch hunt everyone from the analyst to the receptionist is divided into teams. Each team is then given cameras, recorders and four $100 bills. The teams then spend their day at various bank branches chatting up bank employees, opening checking accounts and taking pictures. All this is done to capture the true experience of being a customer.

Of course, one branch hunt will not transform the investment decisions of a high-powered hedge fund. But by organizing the research outing year after year, Second Curve is able to generate hard-to-duplicate insights that inform their long-term strategies.2

In fact, even if your organization can afford to have a team of ethnographers, I say you should still send your folks out into the world to observe your customers in order for them to empathize with your customers. This is very much like what P&G is doing with their Living It and Working It program. The Living It program allows P&Gers to live with their consumers for a fixed period of time and the Working It program allows P&Gers to get into shops and sell to consumers. These two programs give P&Gers the opportunity to immerse themselves in the lives of their consumers.

Let’s say that you are now all fired up to send your team out into the wild to start observing. However, before unleashing them into the open, you will want to first provide a little focus. From our experience of conducting observation safaris, providing focus is the most important item on the agenda, especially if it is a group’s first time going out and doing observation. There are two ways focus can be provided.

The first way is to develop a hunt statement.  A hunt statement is basically a statement that tells the group what is being hunted or what is being observed and what is the purpose of the observation endeavor. An example of a hunt statement is as follows: “We are going to observe how teenagers use cell phones in order for us to build a well-suited cell phone for them.”

The second way is to develop ad-hoc observation personas. The use of personas was popularized by Alan Cooper and is defined as “archetypes representative of actual groups of users and their needs”3. Personas are most widely used when designing software and online applications but we believe it can be adopted to help a team that is going out for observation. Putting together a robust, detailed and well-researched persona takes a lot of time and normally personas are also developed after much observation of one’s customers. However ad-hoc personas for the purpose of observation are a little different. Ad-hoc observation personas can be crafted using the teams’

collective past experiences on the potential target customer for the new product or service.

Therefore when going out for observation, keep in mind the hunt statement. And if you are performing observation in a public area and you feel totally lost and taken aback by the sea of people confronting you, remember the ad-hoc observation persona that was created. Pick a person from the crowd that best resembles the persona and pay attention to how that person is reacting to his/her environment.

So what are you waiting for? Go out there and start observing! No amount of instruction is going to improve your observational skills because the only way it will improve is to go out there and do it. As Maria Montessori says, “We cannot create observers by saying ‘observe’, but by giving them the power and the means for this observation and these means are procured through education of the senses.” To me, there is only one way the senses can be educated, and that is through practice.

References[1] http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_23/b3987083.htm[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/business/yourmoney/13mgmt.html?_r=1&n=Top/News/Science/Topics/Research&pagewanted=all[3] http://www.nycupa.org/past_events/razorfish-2003-05-20.pdf

The HuntCountinued...By Andrew Tan

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