Ethnographic research: UX insights in context

What if you could spend a day with your users to get insights on their daily lives—whether at their desks, on the train, or using your app on the go?

Ethnographic research does just that. Originating from anthropology and social science, it’s a research method that lets you ground your UX strategy in real-world behaviour and observe how people interact with your product in their everyday environments. Instead of relying on what people say they do, ethnographic research lets you see what they actually do.

In this article, we discuss how ethnographic research fits into UX, how it stands out from other research methods, and how it can improve your design process.

Ethnographic research is a qualitative research method rooted in anthropology. It involves studying people in their natural environments to gain insights into their behaviors, cultural practices, and social interactions.

An ethnographic study typically involves fieldwork, where researchers spend extended periods with a group of people, taking detailed field notes and observations. It includes methods like participant observation, informal user interviews, and artifact analysis to capture the complexity of human experiences. The goal is to provide a detailed, ‘thick description’ of a group’s day-to-day.

Unlike controlled environments like usability testing labs or focus group settings, where users know they’re being observed and often behave differently, the ethnographic approach captures genuine behavior in natural settings.

Ethnographic research enables you to:

When you understand why users behave the way they do, you design more thoughtful, user-centered designs that result in products people genuinely connect with.

Ethnographic research is grounded in several core principles that ensure it provides genuine, actionable insights:

Keeping these principles in mind is crucial for successful ethnographic research. Let’s take a look at your options when it comes to ethnographically studying your users.

Here are four types of ethnographic methods used in user research.

A field study is foundational ethnographic fieldwork in which UX researchers observe users in their natural environments, such as their home, office, or public spaces. It enables you to see how distractions, multitasking, or physical settings affect user behavior, giving you real-world insights into product use.

This UX research method can range from an hour to a day or longer, with one-two hours being typical for a single session.

Field studies are particularly valuable early in the UX design process—during the research and product discovery phase—when the goal is to gather foundational insights. Field studies can also be used when launching new products, to understand real-world adoption, or when improving existing products based on how they’re used outside the lab.

A contextual interview (also called a contextual inquiry) is a research method that blends observation with real-time in-depth user interviews. Researchers watch users interact with a product in their natural environment and ask questions about their actions as they perform tasks.

When using this method, ethnographers can follow up with specific, targeted questions based on observations. For example, if a user is struggling with a mobile app, you might ask, “Why did you decide to take that step?” or “What would make this task easier for you?” These follow-up questions help clarify motivations, uncover hidden pain points, and explore areas where users may have developed workarounds.

Netnography, or digital ethnography, is a type of ethnographic research adapted for studying online communities and behaviors. Unlike traditional ethnography, which involves observing people in physical environments, netnography collects data from digital interactions—such as posts, comments, and shared content in forums, social media platforms, and online communities.

Sharing qualities with voice of customer research, netnography sees UX teams gather insights by passively observing online interactions and communities. It’s commonly used in UX research to study how users interact with digital products, brands, or communities.

Active participation is a hands-on research method where researchers fully immerse themselves in the environment of their users. Unlike passive observation, active participation means you take part in the same activities as your participants, engaging directly with their routines and tasks. This allows you to experience the product or service as they do, giving you a firsthand understanding of their challenges, behaviors, and needs.

For example, imagine you're researching how customer support teams use a SaaS ticketing system. Instead of just watching how they log and manage support tickets, you actively participate by using the software alongside them.

You might handle real tickets, track response times, and deal with issues as they arise. This hands-on, side-by-side experience can reveal pain points, such as how the system handles high volumes of requests, or where navigation slows down the process.

While ethnographic research provides rich, context-specific insights that other research methods often miss, it also comes with some challenges. Let’s look at both.

Ethnographic research for a UX study requires careful preparation, from recruiting participants to choosing the right methods for data collection.

Let’s break down the steps needed to help you conduct ethnographic research.

The research goals you establish and questions you ask will guide every aspect of your study, from recruiting the right participants to determining which behaviors and environments to observe. Without a well-defined set of research goals, your study can easily become unfocused, leading to ambiguous or unusable data.

For example, let’s say you're studying how a team lead uses a project management tool during a busy workday. Your goal might be to observe how they assign tasks under time pressure, whether they encounter delays while switching between different features, and how efficiently they track project progress.

In this case, ask research questions like:

You can also create a user research discussion guide to keep your sessions focused and aligned with your goals. The guide will include key questions and prompts to ensure you capture the most relevant insights during user interactions, helping maintain consistency across all participants.

To get the best insights, look for respondents who can provide diverse perspectives on how they use a product in their everyday lives. Recruitment can be done through existing user databases, professional networks, or specialized recruitment agencies that match your criteria with suitable participants.

If you plan to use a participant management tool, the Maze Panel gives you access to over 3 million B2B and B2C participants from 130+ countries, making it ideal for both global and niche studies. With over 400 filtering options, you can ensure that you're targeting the right respondents for your study, whether it’s for qualitative user interviews or UX surveys.

Once you’ve found your users, you need to manage them. Consider a participant management tool or keep it old-school with a simple spreadsheet.

Before beginning research, you need to get participants’ consent. Informed consent from participants means they are fully aware of:

Getting participant consent is non-negotiable—it’s a must for legal, ethical user research.

Start by immersing yourself in the user’s environment, whether it's their workplace, home, or an online setting—depending on your study type. As you observe, focus on capturing both behaviors and contextual details. For instance, how do users navigate a platform during their normal routine? Are there any external factors (like distractions or multitasking) that affect their experience?

Your data collection methods will vary based on the type of ethnographic study you’re conducting. Common note-taking techniques include field notes taken in real-time, or immediately after a session. These notes should capture everything from user behavior to the physical or digital environment.

You can also consider:

As you collect data, organize it as you go. This will help when it comes to your next steps.

After you’ve gathered your data from the ethnographic study, the next step is analyzing that information to extract valuable insights. You can use user research analysis techniques like thematic analysis to group observations by themes or look for patterns.

Look for recurring themes in your observations. These could be pain points, unmet needs, or positive experiences users consistently reported. For example, if multiple users are seen struggling with navigation in your SaaS platform, that indicates a design issue that needs addressing. You could take this learning forward and dig deeper with tree testing, card sorting, or usability testing. Conversely, if users frequently rely on a particular feature, that suggests it is well-designed and integral to their workflow.

If you use Maze, you’ll receive automatically-generated UX research reports for every live test you conduct. Complete with key usability metrics like success rate, misclick rate, and average task duration, you can also see detailed breakdowns of user interactions, helping you understand where users are succeeding or struggling.

Build on this report by adding your observations and findings from the ethnographic study—this provides a comprehensive view of your participants' experience in the real world, and enables you to get a strong understanding of what works and what doesn’t.

Finally, share these reports with your UX team and key stakeholders, add them to your research repository, and utilize them to buy-in and align everyone on the next steps.

Let’s walk through an example of a UX designer working on a travel booking platform who uses ethnographic research to investigate how travelers plan and book their trips.

The UX researcher recruits a diverse group of participants who frequently book travel. They then conduct in-home observations and interviews over several weeks or months, following participants through their entire travel planning and booking process.

After collecting data, the UX researcher analyzes it to identify patterns and themes. They might create user personas, customer journey maps, or affinity diagrams to organize the information. Some potential insights could include:

Based on these insights, the UX designer can now make informed decisions about the travel booking platform's design. For example, they might suggest:

By conducting this ethnographic research, the UX designer gains a holistic understanding of the travel booking process from the user's perspective. This deep, contextual knowledge allows for creating a more user-centered and effective product design that addresses real user needs and behaviors.

Ethnographic research offers unique, in-depth insights into users' lives by observing them in their natural environments. However, the ethnographic approach is time-consuming and requires commitment.

The process involves ethnographic fieldwork, with researchers spending extended periods observing and interacting with research participants. The goal is to gather ethnographic data over a meaningful period, often weeks or even months, depending on the scope of the research study.

That’s why companies must balance their need for detailed ethnographic data with the urgency of modern product development cycles.

Maze offers a simple solution.

With Maze, you can gather real-time quantitative and qualitative insights to act on right now, alongside conducting lengthy in-person ethnographic fieldwork.

With Live Website Testing, Interview Studies, Card Sorting, and more, Maze provides an intuitive way to capture your user’s point of view—allowing teams to iterate quickly while maintaining user-centered design.