How field observation techniques flushed out the truth about home plumbing fixtures, and how you can do it too

Research techniques created to study exotic tribes in their native habitats can also bring powerful insights to product managers, designers, and marketing professionals developing an assortment of home and business products. Respironics’ industrial design director Tom Bonnell, himself a veteran of Kohler Plumbing, described how these research methods are being used to improve the commercial success of products.

Earlier this year Kohler, the Wisconsin-based maker of upscale kitchen, spa and bathroom fixtures, launched a new product under its Sterling brand. It was a shower stall door with a storage unit built into a vertical column inside the enclosure. Designed to help people organize personal grooming items, the new shower door addresses the growing incidence of clutter that’s filling up bathtubs and shower stalls all over the country.

So how did the idea for the storage door come about? Did the designer happen to slip on his wife’s carelessly placed bottle of body wash? No. It resulted from systematic observation, analysis, photo inspection, and deliberately naïve questioning of people whose bathtubs and shower stalls were slowly beginning to overflow with containers of hair, skin, and body care products, according to Tom Bonnell of Respironics, the Pittsburgh-based maker of respiratory care equipment. Until late last year, Bonnell served as Kohler’s director of design. 

Out of the jungle and into the home

These research techniques, and a loose family of others created to help product managers understand more clearly the ways people relate to products and activities in their daily lives, are collectively known as ethnographic research. They are among the methods of contextual inquiry which trace their origins to the cultural anthropologists who created them to study isolated tribal communities in remote locations. 

Increasingly in the world of commercial product design today, these methods are taking their place beside such long-established research tools as surveys and focus groups. And in the context of new product development, they are typically used both at the front-end of the cycle, where completely new ideas are more likely to be entertained, as well as in the detailed design of specific product features. 

“They can be used sequentially,” Bonnell explained. “You can do the exploratory first. For example, understanding that within the showering experience you shouldn’t dwell completely on storage. We also found that a lot of people want a place to sit or rest their leg, to shave their legs or whatever. That was one nugget we extracted from this research. So we went into it deeper and as we came up with ideas about how to do this, we had more questions. That was when we’d go out and observe and talk with people in a more targeted way about that specific area.” 

At the exploratory stage, one popular research method involves getting the subjects of the study to participate in their own observation. “We’ll send cameras to people and ask them to photograph something we’re interested in, like the refrigerator: What does the inside of the refrigerator look like? Sometimes we’ll get them back and you can tell that they cleaned it up first. So we’ll send it back to them and say we want to know what your refrigerator, bathroom, bedroom, or whatever looks like in its worst case,” Bonnell said.

The same approach can also be applied to the world of medical devices, whether in the home or in the hospital. “We’ve also done this at Respironics,” he noted, “where we wanted to understand the patient’s process of putting on a CPAP mask, taking it off, what they do in the middle of the night if they have to get up to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water, and what does their spouse think of it? So we give them a diary in a questionnaire form, and then have them photograph the important things they want us to know. They’re telling us, in effect. ‘I’m trying to write and explain it in my diary. But if I take a picture, it’s going to help support what I’m thinking here.'" 

An anthropological arsenal

Other methods of contextual inquiry are also available, according to Bonnell. One is participatory observation, where subjects in the study are encouraged to describe how they would use a proposed product and what they like or dislike about it. Representations of the product – which can be either physical models or drawings – are typically used to elicit the subject’s feedback. 

Another is called ‘breadboarding,’ where people are asked to use models of the product with Velcro attachments to show where they’d like to place certain features. “You allow them to essentially play and then use that activity for them to discuss why they would put it there,” he said. “It’s not to get a final design, but it’s to get at reasons behind why they like certain things.” 

Still another method is by using diads and triads – essentially a focus group of one person who is accompanied by a spouse or significant others who are there to validate, or refute, the primary subject’s comments to the moderator. The resulting dynamic is very different from the typical focus group of twelve strangers, none of whom may be telling the truth.

In-depth research using these techniques, and others like them, is normally conducted by firms specializing in ethnographic research studies. In addition to the field work, these consultants typically recruit the study’s subjects, document their findings, and provide an analysis that the client can share with company management. But there is a price for that level of comprehensive service: typically $100,000 to $200,000 per study, although it can come in higher or lower, according to Bonnell. As a result, some firms that like the research approach but don’t want to spend that much money, are starting to bring certain of those skills in-house.

And for many companies, the cheapest, fastest, and easiest anthropological research technique is simple observation – preferably using a video camera to capture telling moments. “You can use observation on every project,” Bonnell said. “You can go out and observe people using stuff. You can go and watch customers, you can watch people in sleep labs fitting a mask. You can watch and talk to people, to home care providers dealing with customers, etcetera. There’s lots of opportunities.” 

Why watch?

The essential advantage which is common to all these methods – and the one which differentiates them from such established research techniques as focus groups – is that people’s verbal or written reports of their own behavior are often flawed. Take the case of medical procedures. “At Respironics, we need our development teams to understand the whole procedure, not just what you hear from the doctor, but what they’re actually doing. Often times those are two different things, or they just can’t remember everything they do. Because it becomes such a habit that they sometimes don’t remember it,” he said. 

But even ethnographic techniques have their limitations, Bonnell admits. “Particularly with bathroom types of activities, there are certain things you just can’t observe, like taking a shower or going to the toilet; you generally don’t do that. But you can go into the bathroom to observe other things after an event. Like after they took a shower, how much water is on the floor? Or what do they do with their towels? Or how many items are in the shower space?”

To read our latest articles in Inside Product Strategy™ or for a free subscription, click here.

Peter Longini is the Managing Editor for the Product Strategy Network. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it