Design Ethnography for Lean Teams from Will Evans “What people say is not what people do” – CheskinThere has been a lot of hot air about “getting out of the building”, and “just go talk to customers”, but rarely are those statements backed up with strategic and tactical advice about HOW and WHY. Well, this talk is meant to help. Honestly, getting out of the building and talking to customers is only valuable when done right. As my old martial arts sensei used to say, “practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect!”Design Ethnography is usually conducted to gain a *deep* understanding of the our target customers in order to apply a customer-centered approach to the product strategy. Design ethnography takes the position than human behavior and the ways in which people construct and make meaning of their worlds and their lives are highly variable, locally specific as well as intersubjectively reflexive. One primary difference between ethnography and other methods of user research is that ethnography assumes that we must first discover what people actually do, the reasons they give for doing it, and just as importantly, how they feel while doing it, before we can assign to their actions and behaviors interpretations drawn from our own experiences. Many people believe that design ethnography is only viable in the context of “Big Upfront Design”, while many Agile and Lean teams believe they simply don’t have the time, or that big upfront design is synonymous with waste. During this talk, we’ll explore various myths, methods of ethnography, and ways in which agile or lean teams may use it to gain deeper insights into customer behaviors to create richer experiences without waste.
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