Hasty Storytelling is an EPIC2024 silver sponsor. EPIC is a nonprofit organization, conference, and community, and sponsors support programming that is developed by independent committees members and invites diverse, critical perspectives.
Ethnographers have always found ways to do path breaking work in industries where velocity and quantitative metrics are most valued. Today’s challenges are heightened by reduced research budgets in many areas and heightened focus on speed – and this despite the significant need for deep expertise to guide companies at a time of major social and technological change.
Once again, we find ourselves redoubling efforts to justify the significance of our methodologies and re-educate stakeholders on the value and business impact of these approaches. For small companies and independent researchers who do continual business development to cultivate clients, the need to distinguish the value of ethnographic and qualitative work is ever-present. Our clients assume our work is too expensive or time consuming. Or they are increasing demands for high quality outputs in shorter time frames with fewer resources and less support.
In this environment, the evolution and convenience of online research platforms and video chatting services – now being supercharged by AI and even synthetic users and data – seem like a silver bullet, so that in-person qualitative research can be an even tougher sell.
As ethnographers, we know that the flourishing of digital tools and methods has enriched our field, but we have also proven that they complement rather than replace in-person research. Companies that forgo remote interactions in favor of a purely digital approach run the risk of missing out on crucial insights.
In consumer research, and more generally when companies procure research services from vendors, it is common to separate a project into discrete tasks that can be outsourced to specialists. Although there is clear value in this approach – for example, hiring a specialized recruiter – it can sometimes commodify research and reduce its ultimate value.
As specialists in video-based consumer research and insights deliverables, we often see RFPs and briefs asking for a narrow deliverable. The problem is, we can’t deliver as much value when we have little insight into the broader context of the business challenges, research questions, and stakeholders involved. Nor can we demonstrate to clients the full significance of in-person or more holistic ethnographic approaches.
Research partners can offer more comprehensive support if they have a more active role throughout the research process. This includes being more involved in discussion guide development, debriefs and field conversations, analyses, and assisting report writing. By positioning themselves as an extension of the client’s own research team, partners can provide a more collaborative partnership, enabling clients to rely on their expertise at every stage of the process.
As an example, our agency was hired by a client in the tech industry to produce a video that communicated the findings of a study to stakeholders. Although we were brought on for this specific, final task, our deliverable was powerful and effective because we were deeply engaged, not just with the findings, but with the research team and stakeholders. This enabled us to get the holistic, end-to-end understanding of the research and the organizational environment that we needed.
Our client had conducted a comprehensive, mixed-methods study integrating roughly five years of prior research and data. The objective was twofold: to gain a longer-term understanding of the evolving patterns of consumer behavior around adopting new technologies, and to assess how prevailing social norms influence the acceptance of emerging technologies. The study also encompassed testing the performance of the client’s own wearable tech products.
In order to accomplish these objectives, our client’s internal research team conducted a historical evaluation to understand underlying factors that contribute to broader societal responses to new technologies. This in-depth analysis of various reports, deliverables, and datasets was complemented by expert interviews.
The findings showed that there is a typical path to social acceptance within the tech landscape; that adverse reactions to lifestyle changes brought about by the introduction of more “disruptive” tech launches are predictable; that social norms significantly contribute to why some products are rejected; and those specific aspects of product design have huge influence on the public discourse in the adoption of new technologies.
To effectively communicate the findings to stakeholders, our team took a holistic approach to the research story. Our creative processes thoroughly examined the overarching narrative, and we actively interviewed project stakeholders to understand the nuances of the insights, ethics and privacy concerns, and the client’s organizational context. The video enabled viewers to connect with the findings, allowing researchers to effectively communicate to tech developers and provide actionable insight on navigating societal responses when launching new products.
This video received an overwhelmingly positive response: it has been shared globally by the client and has reached all research and product teams within the client’s organization. High level stakeholders invited the research team into the office to highlight their methods and the impact of our work in the organization. The video will live on as a benchmark for future research verticals and product teams.
There has never been a better time to re-establish the value of holistic and ethnographic approaches in research, research communications, and product strategy. . Our case study on social acceptability shows one way in which we are pushing toward more holistic approaches to our clients and deliverables, despite the need to be flexible to accommodate client needs like budget and speed. If we nurture strong relationships with clients and research partners, they can lean on us and our craft for support.
Of course, there are significant friction points for selling ethnographic work in the market and user research spaces.
One challenge is increasingly strict regulations around personally identifying information, especially in the tech and social media industries, where global privacy efforts are constantly shifting to better protect consumers. Researchers also must be very careful about how we collect and share data, whether it is quantitative sensor data, sensitive interview data, video recordings, or anything else. Although researchers can feel restricted by these positive regulations, ethnographers can be particularly creative in communicating about social worlds using materials that do not rely on PII. We use stories, people’s material contexts and built environments, semiotic and cultural contexts, and other ways of holistically conveying user’s worlds that do not rely on, for example, photos of users.
Another challenge we all face, particularly now, is that budgets for visual ethnographic work are a constant concern for clients, who seek high-quality deliverables with increasingly short research timelines. How can we navigate these challenging parameters while aligning our objectives with those of our client? We have found that it is possible to demonstrate value with a more limited approach and a strong dose of creativity. By starting small and gradually building trust in the production process, we’ve built partnerships that grow into more substantial, higher value, and higher budget studies over time. By remaining highly involved in clients’ research processes and responsive to the nuances of their projects, we have been able to cultivate a strong sense of confidence that enables us all to continue to adapt and innovate.
Ethnographers have done pathbreaking work in industry for decades, and we look forward to learning about your approaches to these and other challenges at EPIC2024!
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