My ethnography-based research touched four continents and involved interactions with more than 10,000 people over the course of three-and-a-half months on the road. After over 730 hours of field research, more than 3,000 pictures, and almost 30 hours of participant-generated video footage, the study yielded a plethora of rich data.

The Ways People Interact 

The primary purpose of this internationally inclusive study was to bring focus to physical and virtual work behaviors. Our team wanted to identify the ways people interact and how employers are supporting and fostering that behavior. What we learned would inform Herman Miller’s new product development and create knowledge that could be shared with customers.

Observation This was the cornerstone of the methodologies. We worked with the customer contacts to determine which departments in their buildings were best to observe. With this there is definitely some sample bias but it is quite intentional. We were looking for study participants who spend more time interacting with others as a function of their jobs. The observation tended to happen across a floor or two of an office building. This helped assure that one subset didn’t cloud the research findings.

We were often given a desk to sit at as a home base. From there, we spent our time watching employees’ interactions. While there was a risk that having us on-site might alter the employees’ behavior, this didn’t appear to get in the way. The employees’ interactions were between themselves; we weren’t really part of the office dynamic. In fact, most employees didn’t pay any attention to us.

Participant Documentation 

We asked employees to use an interaction log, which is a one-page form with check boxes, to chart the characteristics of interaction. We wanted an easy way to paint a picture of each interaction. It captured things like the number of people participating in the interaction, duration, space where it occurred, technology and tools that were used, and the levels of privacy they had, both visual and acoustical. A subsample of the participants, typically 10 to 15 over two days, was asked to complete the log. We didn’t want this to become a burden, so each of these participants completed the log for only one of the two research days. The volume of completed logs intrigued us. In most cases, people were surprised how many logs and how many interactions they had in the course of a day.

Questions

1. How might Herman Miller use these research findings?

2. Are there other research techniques that could have been used to obtain the same information? If so, what are they?

3. Are there advantages to combining ethnographic research with other types of research? If yes, describe those advantages.