At Key Lime Interactive, we specialise in ethnographic user research to bring deep, contextual insight into how real people engage with your product or service in their everyday environments. Rather than relying solely on lab studies or self-reported surveys, we observe users where they live, work and use technology—so you can design with confidence, grounded in authentic behaviour.
What is Ethnographic User Research?
Ethnographic user research (also known as field research, contextual inquiry or design ethnography) adapts the methods of anthropology to UX and product design: it means going into the field, immersing ourselves in the settings where your users live and work, and observing how they naturally interact with systems, tools and technology.
Unlike conventional usability sessions — which may happen in a sterile lab or with artificial tasks — ethnography captures the full context of users’ behaviours, routines, distractions and work-arounds.
Ethnographic research is particularly valuable when you are:
Launching a new product or service and need to discover unmet user needs
Redesigning a product and want to understand how it’s being used in the real world
Facing user-experience challenges that seem persistent and unexplained by usability tests
Seeking a competitive edge by deeply understanding your users’ behaviours, contexts and motivations
Reach out to us today for a strategic consultation. We’ll help you explore how field-based user research can transform your understanding of users, support strategic decisions, and drive design innovation.
