Digital Anthropology for Product Teams
Over the past couple of years there has been a trend of UX researchers applying the anthropology methodology known as ethnography. As a digital anthropologist I think this is great. The only challenge being that it is often only understood at the surface level and largely taken to mean "be more empathic with your research." That works, but only so far.
One thing that we know as anthropologists is that human behaviour is inseparable from cultural context. This is where ethnography, or in the digital world, netnography, comes into play, going deeper than just being more empathic. Here's why and how to apply digital anthropology practices and thinking into the UX and CX research methodologies. Both within and external to agile methodologies.
Product research teams rely heavily on short surveys, some customer interviews, heat maps and journey maps and feature usage analysis. All critical, but missing the deeper cultural patterns that open up paths to more revenues and customer loyalty, reducing churn rates. And remember, data tells you what happened, it doesn't tell you why. Cultural (digital) anthropology tells you why.
In digital spaces cultural understanding isn't just a background factor, a quiet noise to be passed over. Each platform and most SaaS products are living, breathing ecosystems of time-based rituals, unwritten rules and collective behaviours that influence every click, swipe and share.
Digital anthropology reveals these hidden patterns, offering product teams something more valuable than surface-level user behaviour: the cultural code that determines whether features thrive or fade into digital obscurity.
This has profound implications for UX research:
Traditional usability metrics can be supplemented with cultural metrics
Feature adoption should be measured against platform-specific temporal patterns
User research needs to account for platform-specific social facts that users might not be consciously aware of but strictly adhere to
Consider what anthropologist Margaret Mead observed in that humans adaptation to new environments tells us as much about human nature as it does about the environment itself - this holds true with digital spaces as well, from social media platforms to platform products.
Most use of ethnography in UX and CX research is observational in nature, but misses the anthropological concept of "thick description" as termed by Clifford Geertz. By using netnography, one can get deeper into user behaviour understanding the complex web of meanings, symbols and cultural practices that form in digital spaces and around digital products.
A significant benefit is that you can build richer personas and understand customer segments in new ways. This can benefit product marketers in developing more targeted messaging and creative and product managers prioritise feature development that is likely to have more meaningful impact for customers.
All digital spaces and products create their on structural relationships and symbolic systems - understanding these is pure gold for product teams.
If you're thinking, oh no, this is going to add more work and make getting feature roll-outs take longer, not at all. Once you integrate netnographic research practices, it just becomes part of the workflow and often, with product teams I've worked with, it replaces some of the not so informative data used.
To connect all this to UX research and product development consider:
Product Timing:
Feature releases need to align with platform-specific temporal patterns
User testing cycles should match platform-specific content lifecycles
Engagement metrics need to be contextualised within platform-specific time frames
Feature Development:
New features should align with existing social facts or consciously create new ones
Understanding platform-specific social facts helps predict feature adoption
Cultural resistance to new features often comes from violation of established social facts
Cultural insights can inform better prioritisation of features based on cultural significance. Rapid netnographic techniques can provide fast cultural feedback. Post-sprint, one can better understand how features are being culturally appropriated by users. True value is created through social relationships and cultural meaning, not just the utility of features.
