in-home interviews is not ethnography

Grant McCracken writes about the difference between ethnography and in-home interviews that many people nowadays define as ”ethnography”. Many companies say that if they make interviews in people’s homes it’s ethnography! But they are missing a whole lot of the methodology. McCracken points out 4 important things with ethnography: it’s picking up the telling details, it can see all details at once, see the topic from several points of view and to see the product, innovation or opportunity in a broader context. It’s all about putting anthropology back in the ethnography! Almost all of this value is missing when ”ethnography” is simply interviews in-home. Read the whole text at Cultureby.