22 Aug Ethnographic Methods in UX

What if research moved slower, and deeper?

The project brief was crisp. A scheduling tool for frontline shift workers, designed to simplify availability management. But every time we asked users what was difficult, they gave tidy answers: “The app crashes,” or, “We can’t swap shifts easily.” Yet something in the way they spoke, and in the long pauses between, hinted at deeper tensions.

We weren’t sure where to look next, or rather, we weren’t yet attuned to what not to look for directly. Usability tests clarified the “what,” but not the “why.” Surveys returned high frustration but low specificity. And the client wanted insights within three weeks. So we did what the timeline allowed: we went in person, even just for an afternoon. (more on Triangulation)

 

The moment that wouldn’t reduce

We arrived during the early shift handover. People milled around the staffroom, nursing coffee in silence. Phones stayed in pockets. Nobody mentioned the app. Instead, they compared night duties, complained about understaffing, and negotiated favours in a kind of murmured shorthand, a rhythm we couldn’t follow, only witness.

At one point, a junior worker hesitated, looking around before whispering to a colleague: “Could you cover Friday if I do Sunday?” No app, no clicks. Just an old exchange, one that carried risk, negotiation, and trust.

This wasn’t data we could easily quote. No one described it as a “problem.” Yet it reframed everything. The app’s shift-swap function wasn’t just clunky. It bypassed the relational economy that had evolved in that space. Formalising it made it feel surveilled.

 

Etnographic presence: rituals, space, silence

What the afternoon offered wasn’t clarity. It was density.

Ethnographic research in UX isn’t only about long-term immersion, though it can be. It’s a way of being present: slowing down, inhabiting the tempo of the space, and treating silence, gesture, and arrangement as evidence. Here, silence wasn’t absence. It was structure. (More on silent data gaps).
What wasn’t said, or what was said sideways, helped us understand what the tool was displacing.

The staffroom wasn’t neutral. It was a site of informal governance, where shift negotiations played out without oversight. The app, well-meaning as it was, had flattened that.

We didn’t triangulate this moment, not in the traditional sense. No log data or analytics confirmed it. Instead, we held it open. A gesture toward something the research frame had not yet accounted for.

 

Where it resisted translation

We brought these observations back to the team. Not as finalised “insights,” but as fieldnotes, ambiguous, unresolved. The reaction was mixed. “But can we act on this?” one developer asked. “Is it representative?”

This is where ethnographic methods sit awkwardly within agile cycles. They’re not structured to generate uniform findings. They offer perspective, not certainty. They surface friction, rather than resolve it.

We translated what we could. A proposal for informal opt-in channels alongside formal swaps. A UI that staged negotiation, not just execution. But some aspects resisted redesign. Ethnographic presence had shown us where to go gently, where speed would only create further distance.

 

Personal reflections:

As my personal reflection, this work reminded me that not all insight comes from what is expressed. Some of it resides in the structure of hesitation, in what can’t be spoken outright but is still shaping the interaction.

Ethnographic research doesn’t just reveal new content. It shifts what counts as content in the first place. In this project, the most critical finding wasn’t a quote or a pattern. It was a pause, and what that pause protected.

I used to think framing was about the clarity of the question. I’ve come to believe it’s also about the capacity to let the field unsettle the question altogether. Letting the field shape the frame is not about deferring judgement. It’s about honouring context, power, and rhythm, even when they slow us down.

That slowness doesn’t always lead to something actionable. But it often leads to something human. And that, too, is part of what we’re here to design for.

Note: This reflection sits alongside others in The Shape of Access, a series on interpretive UX research.