CORPORATE ETHNOGRAPHY
Ethnography is the branch of anthropology that develops an understanding of how people live their lives. Corporate ethnography is deployed as a holistic analytical tool to document how consumers use products, how employees work, how users interact with a system, and how people communicate. The goal of ethnography is to observe behaviors within specific contexts. This complete understanding of interactions allows a company to develop effective and actionable strategies for products, organizations and services.
Ms. Ward employs ethnography to reveal not simply what people say they do, but what they really do. Through her approaches, an executive team has a more complete, complex and valid picture of people and products. Her tools provide invaluable insight and reveal the underlying human assumptions and invisible practices behind products, processes and services. She tailors her recommendations to a client's specific context and business problem.
As a corporate ethnographer, Ms. Ward is a master weaver and storyteller. She identifies all of the relevant pieces of the woven fabric (people and processes), lays them out to develop the picture of how people interact and relate, and fit together. Once the image is woven, Ms. Ward develops the story and communication process to share the nature of the problem and the proposed solutions to fix it.
Her ethnographic work has tackled such issues as:
Ethnography is the branch of anthropology that develops an understanding of how people live their lives. Corporate ethnography is deployed as a holistic analytical tool to document how consumers use products, how employees work, how users interact with a system, and how people communicate. The goal of ethnography is to observe behaviors within specific contexts. This complete understanding of interactions allows a company to develop effective and actionable strategies for products, organizations and services.
Ms. Ward employs ethnography to reveal not simply what people say they do, but what they really do. Through her approaches, an executive team has a more complete, complex and valid picture of people and products. Her tools provide invaluable insight and reveal the underlying human assumptions and invisible practices behind products, processes and services. She tailors her recommendations to a client's specific context and business problem.
As a corporate ethnographer, Ms. Ward is a master weaver and storyteller. She identifies all of the relevant pieces of the woven fabric (people and processes), lays them out to develop the picture of how people interact and relate, and fit together. Once the image is woven, Ms. Ward develops the story and communication process to share the nature of the problem and the proposed solutions to fix it.
Her ethnographic work has tackled such issues as:
- Marketing: How different are customer groups in their use of products?
- Business Strategy: What are the informal social rules and values in an organization and how do they impact strategies, goals and progress?
- Organizational Culture: How do organizational relationships shape processes, technologies and strategies?
- Product Development: How is knowledge of the consumer used to shape product development?