A day worth blogging about

Yesterday I had the good fortune to be invited to "Made in India." a lecture put on by Carlos Teixeira at Parsons School of Design. The reason I had that good fortune was by the grace of Sonia Manchanda of Idiom, my collaborator and co-curator for the workshop series at EPIC 2010.

The lecture was fascinating. It was the first in a series related to Carlos' current project, to understand how Design is developing in emerging markets. Of particular interest is his observation that Design is developing differently in those markets. The lecture put facts to that observation. Much of their recent work at Idiom has been in the "design of business," through a collaboration with The Future Group, a company dedicated to bringing to the masses what only the rich had before, through a fusion of modern retail business models with Indian culture.

Idiom and Future Group take a particularly aggressive approach to scenario and prototype testing, quickly turning out realistic concepts for introduction to real users in real situations. Some of their innovations include BigBazaar, a big box food retailer that incorporates the local seasonal vendors that Indian communities have come to rely on, and Home Town, a Home Depot / IKEA mashup that makes home design and construction available in a cultural context that does not do DIY.

But that's not all, earlier in the day, I spoke briefly with a collection of the brightest minds working at the intersection of ethnography and business from Latin America, the US and Europe, some of whom are old friends and some I hope will be. That call was to begin the planning process for the EPIC 2010 program, for which I'm the workshop co-chair. Here's a secret: the papers deadline is going to be extended. If you're so inclined, submit something... There's still time.

Working backwards, I spent the morning doing secondary research on the current state of the Healthcare IT arena here in the U.S. and identifying opportunities for innovation in software and services. I found some inspiring new work and personalities like Dr. Jay Parkinson, a physician entrepreneur whose own pediatric practice has been described as

"Geek Squad with doctors and a Netflix-priced monthly membership subscription fee — it is a branded healthcare “experience” that mixes “concierge service for all,” with house/office calls and web visits via email, IM, video chat, and text messaging."

This is why I love what I do... It was a good day.

Labels: design, emerging markets, EPIC2010, ethnography, healthcare, india, innovation

Ethnography is not an in-home interview

Grant McCracken provides a case on how the new Tesco US stores are underperforming expectations, and where the blame may lie.

Ethnography is good at the following things.

1. it is good at picking up the telling detail. And yes, you want to be in someone's home to do this. Or at point of purchase. Or where the product gets consumed.


2. it is good an embracing point of view, so that we see all the details at once. This is the "holistic" approach for which anthropological is in the social sciences famous.


3. it is good at seeing the topic from several (and collective) points of view, the client's, the consumer's, the various members of the household, family, neighborhood, city, etc. This is the cultural point of view. And it looks as if Tesco entirely missed this entirely.


4. it is good at dollying back from fine details to an ever larger picture so that we see the product, or innovation, or opportunity in successively broaders contexts. This is the strength of the big management consulting houses like McKinsey. What they lack in ethnographic nuance and cultural understanding, they make up in the construction of a powerful strategic picture.

The irony: when we define ethnography as interviews done in-home, almost all of this potential value is lost.

Full post: This Blog Sits at the…

Labels: ethnography, user research

What is ethnography and how does it aid customer understanding?

Simon does a wonderful job here describing the value of ethnography, getting past the typical arguments re: depth of understanding (where most explanations stop) to explain the enduring business value of the models of human experience that can result.

But perhaps the most significant advantage of high-calibre ethnographic work is derived not from its academic legacy, but more directly from its recent history as a business tool. Most of the pioneers of applied ethnography developed approaches that were tailored to innovation, decision-making and production processes. In practice, the focus on building models is what realises an ethnographic programme’s value to a business. A model can be applied to issues that weren’t part of the original research brief, and it can be updated and extended long after the original research programme has ended.

Full article: MyCustomer.com

Labels: business, ethnography