Ethnography

Method:

Ethnography explains cultural trends, lifestyle factors, attitudes, and how social context influences behavior. In-person, on-site interviewing and observation provides deep insights about the patient journey. We watch, listen and learn, and then follow up and ask participants to explain their behavior to better understand it. Digital self-ethnography is on the rise, leveraging the power of the smartphone to discreetly document patients’ lives.

Benefits:

• Bring the story to life
• Understand barriers and motivators to engagement
• Obtain crucial contextual understanding

Examples:

• T1 patients new to a just-launched insulin pump completed selfie videos describing the pump’s benefits and challenges
• In-home ethnographies were completed with T2s who recently quit a GLP-1 to understand what went wrong
• Mobile journals provided real-time feedback with T2 patients to see how they handled the challenge of counting carbs and dosing mealtime insulin