Think about the news these days. Often, when you hear about a company, if it’s not about a merger or earnings results, it’s about customer service issues. And especially in this era of social media, phones are on, raised, and documenting customer service issues as they happen. Now, not all
“Why observe? Why not just send out a survey and ASK?” asked a frustrated coworker several years ago. She was talking about an ethnographic study we were doing which involved observing customers in their home environment. Just being the observer made her uncomfortable and fidgety. To answer her question, ethnography
Do you like Likert? Are you crazy about constant sum? Are 5-point importance scales your happy place? In survey design, scales are often used to quantify respondents’ attitudes or behaviors. But it’s not as simple as saying “this should be a closed-ended question rather than an open ended question” (a
It happens. You’re humming along doing your work and *ding* a project lands in your inbox that you didn’t see coming. Not an uncommon occurrence, right? It is inherent in our industry that this happens: whether it is a last-minute project due “yesterday” or a project that stretches you waaaaaay
Remember the old but classic awkward first date story about the person who goes on a blind date and hears “Enough about me, what do you think about me?” from their dinner date? While we all want to avoid that situation, having people want to talk about themselves and their
No, I’m not talking about Survivor: Market Research (how fascinating would that be!), I’m talking about ethnography. Mobile ethnography specifically. As you know, ethnography is the practice of spending time with a subject group to better understand behaviors, interactions and overall culture. Researchers have long been facilitating ethnography projects: observing