Solve Anything! Building Ideas through Design - Mar 2010

I came across ethnography in the book "About Face 3, The Essentials of Interaction Design", where a "Goal-Oriented Design" approach is described.

It is described as followed:

1. Research, users and the domain
2. Modeling, users and use context
3. Requirements, definition of user, business, and technical needs
4. Framework, definition of design structure and flow
5. Refinement, of behaviors, form and content
6. Support development needs

"Goal-Directed Design combines techniques of ethnography, stakeholder interviews, market research, detailed user models, scenario-based design, and a core set of interaction principles and patterns. It provides solutions that meet the needs and goals of users, while also addressing business/organizational and technical imperatives. This process can be roughly divided into the six phases mentioned above. These phases follow the five component activities of interaction design identified by Gillian Crampton Smith and Philip Tabor - understanding, abstracting, structuring, representing, and detailing - with a greater emphasis on modeling user behaviors and defining system behaviors."

I think it is especially the first, second and third step where ethnography is highly anticipated.
Using ethnography we come back to the "Integrated Approach" of problem solving, in contrast to the isolated, separated, sterile laboratory environment.