Key Benefits of Mobile Ethnography
Way back when, the coronavirus pandemic had a profound impact on the everyday lives of people around the world, disrupting work and economic activities globally. As countries slowly resumed activities, the pandemic left a lasting effect on how millions approach their professional lives. Even as we reached the six-month mark of the COVID-19 outbreak, the future impact on our daily routines remained uncertain. The sudden shifts in the global market due to the pandemic had undeniable commercial consequences worldwide.
Mobile Ethnography: A Remote Work Research Revolution
Indeemo's global reach, with clients from New York to New Delhi, highlights its significance in an evolving research landscape. The pandemic underscored the challenges of traditional face-to-face research methods, such as ethnographic fieldwork and user testing, which often required travel and personal interactions—activities that became notably unsafe.
The Indeemo platform emerged as a critical tool in overcoming these challenges by leveraging mobile ethnography, which gained prominence during and after the pandemic. This method continues to offer a robust alternative to traditional techniques, ensuring the safety of researchers and participants while enhancing the reach and effectiveness of qualitative studies.
This article will delve into the key advantages of Mobile Ethnography explain how Indeemo is transforming Online Qualitative Research by integrating novel methodologies that have become essential in the current landscape
Key Benefits of Mobile Ethnography
Increased Authenticity
Mobile ethnography captures behaviours and reactions in real-time, significantly reducing the likelihood of post-rationalization and enhancing the authenticity of the data.
Unanticipated Insights
This methodology can surface insights that may not be anticipated by traditional research approaches, offering a deeper understanding of the subject matter.
Reduced Group Bias
Unlike focus groups, mobile ethnography minimizes the effects of group bias, providing more individual, unbiased responses.
Contextual Richness
Digital ethnography offers a window into the real-life contexts of respondents. This is particularly valuable for product designers seeking to understand how their products fit into the daily lives of users.
Complementary to Other Research Methods
Mobile ethnography can be effectively combined with other primary research methods, enriching the overall research design.
Scalability
Since mobile ethnography does not require researchers to travel or spend time in-person with respondents, it allows for the study of larger samples with the same budget typically allocated to traditional ethnographic studies.
Mobile ethnography is an invaluable addition that enhances the contextual richness of traditional research methods, such as focus groups, in-depth interviews (IDIs), and conventional ethnography. It offers a cost-effective alternative for clients seeking a deeper, more nuanced understanding of their user base, making it an essential tool for researchers and designers.
Indeemo mobile ethnography app in UX , UI and Design
Compelling Benefits of Mobile Ethnography
There are several compelling benefits for researchers and designers who are considering mobile ethnography as part of their research toolkit including:
More cost-effective than traditional ethnography. Cost savings become disruptively compelling if research in multiple countries is required.
An unobtrusive methodology that is not reliant on the researcher being physically present and hence removes the “researcher effect”
Real-time feedback: respondent uploads are immediately displayed for researchers to analyze"
Mobile Optimised Website Versus Native App
Many platforms claim to be “device agnostic” (which is another way of saying that they are mobile websites and not native apps). Mobile optimized web-based tools will work on any platform (mobile, tablet, and desktop) but require a connection to the internet to be able to function.
So, if your respondents find themselves in a location where there is no internet access e.g. a supermarket, hospital, or underground public transport, they will not be able to use the tool until they get back into coverage. Simply put, with mobile-optimized web-based tools, if there is no internet, there is no data capture and as a consequence, you are left waiting on respondents to bulk upload posts at a later time when they may have forgotten what they were thinking or feeling in the moment.
Native apps simply refer to an App that you download from the App Store or Google Play onto your phone. Because they are stored locally on the phone, some native apps can be used offline, and hence respondents can continue to use the app to record and capture data even when out of coverage thereby ensuring uninterrupted, in-the-moment feedback from the respondent.
So what are the features you should consider when evaluating the various mobile ethnography solutions that are available?
1. Frictionless User Experience
Given you will need respondents to use a smartphone application, you’ll need to ensure that the application is intuitive, well designed, simple to use, and allows respondents to complete their tasks seamlessly. We hear regular complaints from researchers who have used complex, confusing technologies that respondents struggle to understand and hence fail to use.
If your respondent is confused or is struggling with the UX of the mobile ethnography app, they are more likely to abandon your research leaving you with no data to analyze and the last-minute scramble to recruit more respondents to reach your quota. The simplicity of UX is, in our opinion, the most critical factor when selecting a mobile ethnography partner.
Indeemo mobile ethnography app and dashboard
2. Mobile Optimised Website Versus Native App
Many platforms claim to be “device agnostic” (which is another way of saying that they are mobile websites and not native apps). Mobile optimized web-based tools will work on any platform (mobile, tablet, and desktop) but require a connection to the internet to be able to function. So, if your respondents find themselves in a location where there is no internet access e.g. a large supermarket, hospital, or underground public transport, they will not be able to use the tool until they get back into coverage.
Simply put, with mobile-optimized web-based tools, if there is no internet, there is no data capture and as a consequence, you are left waiting on respondents to bulk upload posts at a later time when they may have forgotten what they were thinking or feeling in the moment.
3. Multimedia Capabilities & Offline Access
The application should allow respondents to upload photos, videos, and free text posts as well as to add written captions to provide further detail to their photo and video posts.
Video, such as video surveys can transport you into the everyday reality of your respondents, so choosing a platform that is robust and configurable for video is a core requirement. You should choose a platform that enables you to specify both the duration, resolution, and compression of the videos so that you can tailor the video to the precise requirements of your project. Short voxpop style tasks usually require just 1- 2-minute videos which most platforms will support. However, if you need to capture someone cooking or applying cosmetics, or want to capture an out-of-the-box experience, you will require a platform that will support up to 8 or 10 minutes of video in one continuous clip and very few platforms offer this capability.
Furthermore, on-device compression (i.e. reducing the file size before it is uploaded) can save respondents a huge amount if they are uploading videos over 3G or 5G.
4. International Capability
Given the attraction of accessing insights from respondents in multiple locations around the world, offering access to native languages is also important.
5. Interactive Moderation
Platforms that offer interactive moderation capability using ‘push notifications’ enable you to immediately probe respondent uploads as soon as you receive them. Push notifications are generally only available with native apps and only some suppliers offer this capability.
6. Qualitative Data Analysis with Generative AI
Not all platforms are equal when it comes to organizing, coding, and analyzing data.
Choose a platform with an intuitive dashboard, powerful search, filtering capabilities’, keyword cloud, journey mapping, the ability to quickly code and tag data, the ease of export so that you can download photos, videos, and text, and now, rapid Qualitative Analysis with Generative AI.
7. Client Access
Platforms that offer client/observer access enable your clients to observe the research as it happens from the comfort of their desk. Enabling clients to witness the fieldwork as it progresses helps build empathy and can be a powerful way to get your client to actively engage with you on the research. Furthermore, enabling clients to “get behind” your report and to see the raw data for themselves builds transparency and trust, brings the customer to life, and underpins the insights you deliver in your debrief.
8. Respondent Recruitment
Choose and work with a platform that can streamline the entire recruitment process. Researchers should be able everything from creating screeners to distributing incentive payments efficiently. having a platform that offers research recruitment not only simplifies logistical workflows but also optimizes the overall research experience, allowing you to focus more on deriving insights and less on administrative tasks.
Where can Mobile Ethnography be Used?
Mobile ethnography as a methodology can be used to supplement every phase of your clients’ innovation journey from the point where they know very little about a target audience to the point where they want to understand the microscopic touchpoints of their existing customer experience.
We see mobile ethnography as an “umbrella” term and methodology that can be used to encapsulate how researchers can build a closer, real-time connection with respondents in multiple research use cases.
For example, mobile ethnography can be used as a standalone or supplemental research methodology to get a deeper understanding of real-life behaviors in the following scenarios:
Diary Studies
Need to learn more about your customer? Week in the life diary studies can be used to understand consumption patterns and explore customer needs. These usually operate best when respondents are given a lot of latitude and scope to let you into their everyday lives.
Pre-Tasking Research
Need to get to know your respondent before you meet your respondent? Pre- tasking using a mobile ethnography platform can significantly increase the productivity of your IDIs and focus groups by shifting your “time in the room” from discovery to validation and probing.
Voice of Customer Research
Mobile ethnography can be a powerful way to get under the skin of a subset of your quant respondents and to bring the metrics to life using the resonant voice of customer video.
User Research & User-Centred Design
Agile, user-centric design and product teams leverage mobile ethnography to carry out user diaries and capture rich contextual needs and behaviors without the need to be physically present with the target user.
Concept and Product Testing
Make your creative concept and product design cycles more agile and iterative by using mobile ethnography to get respondents to record how they feel about your concepts / use your prototypes in their everyday contexts without the need to bring them to a central location or lab.
Understanding Path to Purchase
The path to purchase is increasingly a non-linear, iterative, multi-platform quest involving multiple triggers, several phases, and lots of touchpoints. Mobile ethnography enables you to ‘walk in the shoes’ of your respondents by getting them to record every milestone and moment while they navigate this journey.
Shopper Research
Instead of spending time observing or shadowing shoppers in-store, mobile ethnography enables you to scale the number of shopping missions you can design by getting consumers to record media-rich, point-of-purchase emotions and behaviors whether in-store, online, or both.
Customer Journey
Getting a deeper understanding of the moments and experiences that matter most to your customers can create impactful and lasting value. Mobile ethnography enables you to witness your customers’ in-context, in-the-moment experiences while they are interacting with your product, service, or experience. The authenticity and contextuality of this data capture adds a whole new level of insight into what’s working and what’s not, across the entire customer journey
Leveraging the Power of Mobile Ethnography
Mobile Ethnography presents a compelling substitute for traditional, face-to-face research methodologies. With its agile and adaptable nature, the Indeemo app and dashboard stand ready to support virtually any research project. The remote capabilities of this tool enable the execution of international and multi-location projects seamlessly from your office. By using Mobile Ethnography, researchers can foster growth, and achieve more comprehensive research outcomes.