tools of ethnographic analysis in service design

Tools of Ethnographic Analysis in Crafting Insights

Contact informationTaneli [email protected]+358 44 358 4433

Different fields of building insights

Big data and quant research

Behavioral economics

Deep insights of human sciences

Customer / consumer / user / human insights

•  Large data sets•  Recorded online

behavior

•  Experimentations•  Studying different

rationalities

•  Studying the quality of experience

•  Cultural “why” behind rationalities

My background – building bridges from social sciences to business and design

Work experience:

•  Insight Delivery, Education, research and consulting

•  Diagonal, Insight Specialist in a service design agency

•  Gemic, consultant and ethnographer in an innovation consultancy

•  Eximia, teacher of sociology and a marketing assistant in an education company

Education:

•  Lund University, MA Applied Cultural Analysis•  University of Helsinki, B.Soc.Sc., Sosiology

Taneli Heinonen, Insight Delivery

Companies and projects during the past year

Deloitte took service design into their portfolio in Finland – I’ve been working with them on the few first projects.

Demos Helsinki is a think tank and I’ve helped them in building a new service concept for social housing company.

Skog Helsinki is a new creative insight agency and I’ve helped them in getting few of their first projects and working on them.

JPY is the association for the professional soccer players in Finland. I’ve organized workshops and helped them build their strategy for the next three years.

Design for Government is a course organized by Aalto University. I’ve been part of staff coaching the multi-disciplinary student teams in the course.

Laurea University of Applied Sciences has a Master’s program in Service Innovation and Design and I’ve been teaching two courses: Methods of Service Design & Deep Customer Insights.

Insight Design

Ethnography

Quantitative research

Psychology

Visual designUXInterior designBusiness design

StorytellingMarket research

Semiotics

Insights need to be relevant for a) strategic level and b) concept development

•  Good consumer insight is not just a piece of data or a market research finding.

•  Good insights explain the world of the consumer by interpreting research data.

•  Good insights introduce frictions in the world of consumers.

•  Good insights are relevant for the business challenge at hand.

Analytical approach of social sciences fuels the creative process when it is rigorously executed and well communicated

Insight part of the design process has five stages:

1. Discover 2. Define

1. Re-framing the problem

What are we trying to understand?What is this all about from the perspective of people and culture?

2. Designing the research

What will be the research questions?What kind of methods should be used?

3. Empirical research

How to apply the methods in the real world?How to document and map the data?

4. Analysis

What is the data telling us?How should we make sense of it?

5. Communication

What does the analysis mean for the creative task at hand?What kind of opportunities can we see?

Insight delivery point

Analytical Mindset Creative Mindset

From data to analysis

“Analysis is the process of observing and breaking down a complex topic or substance into smaller parts to gain a better understanding of it.”

LanguageKinship & social organizationObjects

Distribution of workEconomic circulationRecreationGames

Food and nutritionGender rolesLaw and rulesMyths

Aiming at Thick Descriptions

Ethnography in modern settings – studying different social worlds

Photo credits: National Eye Institute. Flickr.com.

Studying the experiences in different worlds: properties vs. aspects

•  Data points as facts vs. experiencing the aspects

•  Biological sex vs. cultural gender (masculinity – femininity)

•  Properties of entities vs. relationships between people and brands/people

•  Correctness vs. truth

•  Detached vs. embedded

•  Believe in conclusive facts vs. doubt in “near truths”

•  Ethnography as making something familiar strange – and strange familiar

User - service Multiplicity of roles – multiplicity of services helping and hindering

Service design affects different relations

Role – The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life

Props

Framed situations

Backstage

Frontstage

Audiences

Role is not something unreal – we are what we present, and the roles and stages change over the course of our days.

Roles are combinations of normative expectations towards the behavior of a person in the role. Roles are always connected to other roles. (teacher – pupil)

Impression management

What Can We Try to Understand

•  Look for experiences of conflicting role expectations – How can we mitigate these?

•  Look for situations and rituals where people swithc roles – What happens? How can we smoothen the transformations?

•  Look for props and tools that are failing the role – How do we support people in maintaining their face?

•  Look for how people enter different roles – What is ascribed, achieved, wanted, unwanted? How do we support the dynamics?

Fields and capitals – different social realms and how we compete in them

Economic

•  Wealth and economic power.

•  What you have?

Cultural Social

•  Internalized skills and capabilities.

•  Material cultural objects.•  Institutionalized degrees.•  What you know and how

can you present that?

•  Networks and relations that provide social responsibilities and entitlements.

•  Who you know and how can you use that?

•  Look for the fields and positions in the fields related to the research problem – What are the rules of the field and how do we help people to follow or break them in a fruitful way?

•  Look for the uphill battles in the fields – Where can we leverage the meaningful change from?

•  Look for the types of capital people gather and apply – How can we support them in their endeavours?

What can we try to understand

Access to aspects of urban space that provide good experiences, help save time and translate into other types of capital.

•  Proximity to interesting ”third places” such as cafes and restaurants•  Proximity to local services such as grocery stores, health services, schools,

recreational activities etc. •  Beautiful architecture and visibility of the history of the place•  Access to nature

Example of a new concept: Spatial Capital

Case Example from Helsinki: Middle aged men who don’t use the public health services

Starting point:

A huge health gap between the different socio-economical groups of men.

Especially middle aged men passive in suing health services and the main group suffering of national diseases, diabetes 2 and hypertension.

Where do we want to be:

Have a better understanding of the gap in order to find means of making it smaller –engaging people with the public healthcare services and healthier lifestyles.


Finding the people:

Men outside of occupational health care.

Day shift – groups of men spending time in the neighborhood pubs of the suburbs.

Forms of capital

Social capital – network around the place for advice, support and discussion. Group supports freedom and masculinity.

Cultural capital – knowledge and skills – no health-related discussions or knowledge.


Roles:

Traditional independent masculinity – fixing working-man ethics.

Body as a machine – or something you work with. (not on)

Collision of roles and settings:

Negative attitudes towards health care – feminine, patronizing, “guessing-centres” that try to tell you how to live

Clean white walls, waiting rooms, white jackets – tools used on you (not by yourself) – making a fuss of “small problems”

Case example: Taking healthcare to the neighborhood pubs in Helsinki

Case example: Taking healthcare to the neighborhood pubs in Helsinki

Municipality of Helsinki, health care

1.  Ethnographic research

Understanding and mapping the relations of the passive middle aged men to health and health care.

Fieldwork – the day shift – in the pubs of Eastern Helsinki.

2. Co-creation

Discussion the possibilities for bringing health to the everyday agenda through the pubs.

Discussions with the bartenders and customers.

3. Service prototyping

Pilot of a light health service taking place in two pubs every second week for two hours.

Blood sugar and pressure measurements and possibility for discussions with health care students.

http://www.uppsatser.se/uppsats/55a5fdaa92/

RECAP: Study aspects and relations

When looking for patterns consider for example:

•  ROLES: What kind of roles are present – what kind of other roles are they connected to?

•  FIELDS: What kind of social worlds are present? What kind of fields there are?

•  CAPITAL: How do people compete on those fields? What forms of capital do they gather and apply?

Some people and books behind these thoughts

Clifford Geertz

Pierre Bourdieu

Bronislaw Malinowski

Erving Goffman

Bruno Latour

Insight DeliveryBy Taneli Heinonen

Thank you for your interest. Feel free to contact me anytime.

Contact informationTaneli [email protected]+358 44 358 4433