Front End of Innovation 2013

Henry Ford famously said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”  Focus groups and surveys are useful for incremental improvements, but people can’t tell you what they would want if only you could invent it. This is where ethnography comes in. By directly observing what people do – not what they say they do – and systematically analyzing their behavior, ethnography reveals opportunities for new product concepts and designs.

This session will use real-world case studies to show how we use ethnography to uncover insights about human practices and, using iterative design methods, build innovative technology that meets unmet market needs.