I came across an interesting article this week in New Scientist, an interview with a guy who does in-depth ethnographic research at Nokia.

Jan Chipchase a Design Researcher from Nokia spends his time traveling the world to find out how Nokia phones are really being used. In some countries, the mobile phone number is actually written above the door of a person’s home to identify where they live. In other situations, people will share phones or even  use them as a money transfer system.

Jan uses a number of tools to get inside usage of mobile phones, including - shadowing, capturing a day in the life of a user, home and contextual interviews, usage observation, wallet mapping, uncovering motivations and looking for differences between what people say they do and what they do. In short, they are using the full range of ethnographic tools and techniques. The insights Jan derives from this work will show up in future Nokia products.

I’ve added a link to a summary slide show which helps to illustate some of the key learnings (as far as Nokia can share) from this work. Clearly a very powerful and insightful set of tools for innovation. Interestingly some of the extreme users that Nokia are learning from are in what we somewhat condescending call the “emerging markets”. Just goes to show that in innovation you really can’t make assumptions about your customers.