Can we spend the weekend together?
Doing “ethnography research” is potentially one of the most over-used phrases these days, but we are very clear to distinguish between our in-home interviews, shop-alongs and true ethnographies.
With this methodology, our respondents rarely know the category or clients we are working for, and we spend most of our time observing and participating rather than conducting structured interviews. We’ve (literally) awakened with families in Mumbai and London to understand their morning rituals, led month-long projects understanding how young guys truly engage in NFL viewing, watched moms in Tokyo pack lunches for their young kids, and we’ve witnessed the frustrations of inexperienced cooks trying to create something “homemade”. We’ve also sensitively witnessed both the suffering and the courage of people living with chronic diseases.
This type of work takes patience and it almost always happens on weekends and off-hours, but many of us can point to the specific moments when we found the magic insights that sparked products on the shelf today.