Watch and learn
Editor’s note: Tara Susman is the cultural anthropologist at The Insight Works, Inc., a New York research firm.
The first challenge for qualitative researchers is to become intimately knowledgeable about consumers’ lives, to learn about how they live, to examine what they think and feel, and to understand what emotional and material roles products and brands play in their lives. The second challenge is to determine what this information means and how it can be put into action.
Let’s look at the dilemma firsthand. Consider these stories:
- A customer at a newly renovated gas station is asked to play with the small Internet interface on the gas pump. He hesitates, approaches, recoils, and then tentatively reaches out his left hand to touch the screen (he is right-handed), maintaining the largest distance possible between himself and the device. With his neck contracting, his shoulders pulling back, and his torso twisting away from the device, he pushes on the screen. He tries again; nothing happens. Jerkily shifting his weight, he sighs. Without looking the interviewer in the eye, he says, “I’m afraid I’m not going to be much help to you.”
- A young single mother is grocery shopping with her six-year-old daughter. As they discuss food, the mother speaks softly in Spanish and her daughter responds loudly in English. Every step along the way invites a battle: the daughter grabs sweetened yogurt in a Technicolor package, chocolate Popsicles, and a bag of mint cookies, and throws them in the cart. After a protracted discussion marked by much pleading on both sides, the mother convinces her daughter to select fruit juice pops instead of the chocolate ones. She wins this argument by telling her daughter that the chocolate ones are low-calorie. The daughter is the victor with the other treats. Walking home, the daughter convinces her mother to allow her to eat a cookie. While the mother cooks dinner, the daughter rifles through the refrigerator and helps herself to a yogurt. At the dinner table, another battle ensues over the healthy meal the mother has lovingly prepared; the daughter is no longer hungry.
- A schizophrenic man in his 50s lives unassisted but spends most of his time at a vocational clubhouse where he takes most of his meals, spends time with friends, and works in the greenhouse. Relaxing at home on his threadbare couch, he laughs as he says, “I don’t shop, I don’t cook, and obviously I don’t clean.” The layer of dust covering most of the objects in his apartment gives them soft, fuzzy edges. A mountain of papers is piled on the table and has partially drifted to the floor. A bicycle blocks the refrigerator. On the stove sits a deep pot thickly encrusted with black beans that could only be removed with a chisel. Most of the light bulbs in the modest apartment are burned out, but you can still see the piles of musty books in the bedroom - even on the bed - which prevent both free movement in the room and the realistic possibility of ever locating any particular book.
These are three examples from video ethnography research projects. As you were reading the descriptions, you envisioned each situation, giving the stories life, imagining shapes, colors, sounds, characters, places, creating a three-dimensional narrative. In short, you created a film in your head. But consider what the depth of your learning could be if you were able to see and hear each situation in an actual film, laden with emotional depth and cultural meaning.
Video allows you to observe, not just imagine, consumers in the context of the conflicts and choices of their daily lives.
In the first example at the gas pump, the viewer can watch the subject’s awkward movements and hear the hesitation in his voice. Through video, we learn how body language reveals fear about encountering new technology, and that the subject’s embarrassed demurral indicates that the technology needs to be made more human.
The second example depicts in the story of dinner preparation a textured portrait of family dynamics and emotions, multiple languages, and hybrid culture. We can see for ourselves several parent-child battles, hear the mixing of languages, and watch step-by-step the food preparation.
The third film visually depicts what is a mystery to most people: how a mentally ill man lives. This video gives an intimate glimpse of the home environment and daily challenges of a member of a misunderstood and maligned subculture.
Unaware of motivations
Ethnography is an approach to research that has been borrowed and adapted from cultural anthropology. A fundamental assumption of cultural anthropology is that people are not conscious of many aspects of their own experience. They may be unaware not only of their motivations, but of their actual behavior, both on an individual level, and in terms of how they move within the larger web of culture.
If a man is unaware that he licks excess margarine off his knife after each spread across his toast, he will not be able to describe this behavior (even if he were humble enough to do so), let alone be much help in analyzing it.
Anthropologists are not excluded from having this blind spot about themselves, by the way. For this reason, many anthropologists study people outside of their own culture, often in another region of the world, in order to observe with the uninitiated eyes of an outsider. Therefore, when they study their own culture, video becomes an essential tool for insights and analysis that also can be shared with others.
Engage in and observe
Anthropological fieldwork research is based in participant-observation, a paradoxical exercise in which the researcher both engages in the everyday life of the subject and observes what is going on, in order to reflect upon and interpret it afterwards.
As a participant, the anthropologist joins the subject in mundane activities that relate to the topic - shopping in a toy store with parents and kids, driving the car to the dump, feeding and playing with the dog, going out to a bar with a group of friends. She both lets conversations have a natural flow and also asks questions about what is going on with the fresh perspective of someone who has just arrived from a foreign country.
The difficulty of participant-observation lies in trying to take part in the action and observe it at the same time. In this respect, videography has an advantage over other collection methods such as note-taking, audio recording, still photography, or any combination of these, as it reproduces the fieldwork experience much more fully than any of the other techniques. The video camera becomes another observant eye that captures the action and makes it available for others to see. Further, video shot by a skilled cameraperson gives a much deeper sense of the subject as a three-dimensional person with human relationships and in a daily cultural context.
Video recordings of all aspects of the fieldwork are useful in both the analytical phase of the work and in serving as a vibrant medium to present the findings. Because of the interconnectedness of anthropology and videography in this approach, it is crucial that the anthropologists are trained in videography and video editing, and that participating videographers and editors are carefully briefed about the project, so that the process of editing is an intellectual collaboration.
Carefully study
Conducting ethnography with video thus enables the anthropologist to carefully study her dialogue with the subject, and to re-observe the subject’s behavior and environment. Not only the precise language the subject uses, but also the tone of his voice, his facial gestures and body language, the verbal and non-verbal interactions with others in his everyday life, the way his favorite room is decorated, the way he handles his belongings. Video that has been directed by an anthropologist can supply a rich source of information about the subject, which then should be edited to reflect the anthropologist’s understanding of the data.
An edited video ethnography does not make you a fly on the wall; this is impossible. Anthropologists, in our era at any rate, do not usually make claims to objectivity. Anthropology is a social science, with an emphasis on social. Much of the best research done in this way emerges from building trust - creating a real human connection. Objective facts may be out there, but any methods of collection, analysis, and presentation of findings will have a perspective, based on variable factors at multiple points in the process. (This is equally true for quantitative research and other forms of qualitative research.) For example: With what methods and theories has the anthropologist been trained? What questions were asked? What were not asked? What did the camera capture? What was going on outside the frame? Which video clips were selected for the edit? How were they interpreted? What other clips were they juxtaposed with? What narrative does the edited film tell?
Research should have a point of view; all human beings live and experience the world subjectively. Taking what people say and what they do at face value (if this is even possible) will undermine most of the value of the research. Anthropology employed in the interpretation and editing of the video provides an analytical perspective, which in turn offers conclusions that can be put into action.
Not just a record
Thus what video ethnography offers is not just a record of behavior; it offers the interpretation of motivations, emotions, decision-making, lifestyle, relationships, and other forms of human action and interaction. Video ethnography enables the researcher to address issues and make recommendations at various levels.
- For example, for the case in which the new interface is tested, the analysis might use the video to show what works in the new electronic device and what is missing. Then the report could make recommendations ranging from how to make the Internet interface easier to use to how to re-organize the retail space - to align both with current consumer behavior and encourage a new experience.
- In the family food preparation example, the research could demonstrate inter-generational power struggles and the emotional underpinnings of preparing and providing food for family members. It might detail the ways in which an ethnicity affects food culture and suggest strategies for marketing to and meeting the needs of the Hispanic market.
- In the third case, after demonstrating the struggles in a schizophrenic’s daily life, the study could describe the nature of this social group and its relationship to the larger culture, and suggest how to shape communication with these socially segregated consumers.
These projects provide clients with the most complete understanding when there is also a written component of the analysis that, organized in tandem with the edited video, significantly elaborates upon the footage and spells out recommendations. Alternately, the video and the written conclusions can be integrated into a single document, which can be shared on an intranet, via CD-ROM, etc.
Engaging way
Video ethnography combines cultural anthropology and videography to build a rich understanding of lifestyle, cultural environment, social behavior, emotions, and motivations of consumers in the contexts in which they live. The approach of video ethnography thus gives companies an engaging way to learn about consumers on both a personal level and as a part of a larger social environment.