There’s a lot of discussion in business circles about using ethnography to inform business decisions, and the wider trend of using cultural and observational data to drive consumer insight. The question that comes for me, when I hear people use ‘ethnography’ when they clearly aren’t sure what that entails, is how much of this interest is generated by real buy-in, and how much is generated because ethnography is a new silver bullet buzzword.

So while I am an ardent evangelist of using observational, contextual, and behaviorally grounded methods over traditional market research, I’m also skeptical when I see places like DDB launch SignBank, a bottom-up trend spotting effort. Does SignBank exist because traditional field work is too time consuming and costly? (maybe) Does SignBank exist because DDB sees a new market? (certainly).

Overall, anytime that there’s an increase of interest in a field from business, there will be people who will offer services regardless of the fit for the project, or the experience of the consultant. I guess the increase in design + business consulting offerings is one trend we can see without a field study…I’m just cautious about burnout, and about turning design and business into meaningless noise instead of the transformational power it can bring to all kinds of challenges through design thinking.