Generate deep, actionable insight about your customers, clients, and culture.
Ethnography is a style of research done by walking in someone else’s shoes–literally, where possible.
As practitioners, we have witnessed consumers in private moments, and shadowed executives negotiating mergers. We’ve interviewed warring factions of lawmakers, and facilitated conversations about race, gender, and power with open-ended curiosity. This fieldwork has shed uncommon light on the lives of the people we’ve aimed to know, but what’s more, it has changed us as listeners, problem solvers, and communicators.
Compared to other research approaches, ethnography is authentically intimate, radically open-ended, and sometimes a little guerilla.
We go where others don’t to discover and define the human truths you didn’t know you didn’t know. Whether you need to dissect your customer friction points, identify opportunities for innovation, or better understand your team culture, our discovery practice delivers powerful insights you can put into action. Designed for your audience, timeline, and budget, these tailored, 360° inquiries give you access to the hidden forces at work in the lives, cultures, and communities you touch.
Ethnographic Discovery
IRL & Virtual Interviews - Onsite Observations
Journey Mapping - Shadow Studies
Insight Workshops - Co-creation Sessions
Research that meets people where they are.
For authentic insight, context is key. That’s why we investigate on location, in the space and places, environments and events that make people who and how they are. For over twenty years, we have immersed ourselves in worlds both foreign and familiar, examining and experiencing the forces at work in the lives of others.
Empower your team with powerful insights from your customers, competitors, and clients. We offer a range of qualitative research services, from interviews to site visits, focus groups to shop-alongs. Find out what you don’t know you don’t know and watch your possibilities multiply.
Participant Observation is the practice of studying a person or group while remaining mindful of one’s role as a witness.
The name of the practice is perfect–it is to participate while observing. To do one without the other doesn’t quite work, as self-awareness can get lost in full participation, and strict observation can feel too distant for empathy. Balancing the two is a challenge, and resonates with many spiritual teachings, from the Christian instruction to “be in the world but not of it”, to Hindu and yogic approach of self-witnessing, to the Buddhist discipline of mindfulness. And, like a spiritual practice, learning how to do it is a whole journey. It is really cool and deep that way.
The Ethnography Course
Want to learn Participant Observation? Train your team in ethnographic research. Ideal for strategists, creatives, marketers, and innovators, the Others Ethnography Course demystifies the practical magic of insight generation, from designing the research process to uncovering deep and actionable human truth.
Lesson 1: Eyes and Ears
For any communicator, intern to expert, this module covers the fundamentals of intentional conversations, as well as how to glean insight from the perspectives of others. Level up your whole team.
Observation and Listening
Asking Better Questions
Insight Generation
Lesson 2: Strategist Toolbox
For pros only, this training dissects the mechanics of research design– methodology selection, audience segmentation, strategic recruitment, documentation, and inquiry composition.
Research Design
Documentation and Analysis
Writing Discussion Guides
Lesson 3: Fieldwork
During this segment, participants prepare, unpack and troubleshoot the emotional labor of immersive research, while conducting interviews and observations with live coaching and support.
Ethics and Boundaries
Scrappy Workarounds
Emotional Hygiene
Lesson 4: Mastering Connection
An advanced training in the messy work of EQ and group dynamics, this session prepares practitioners to share potent content, and communicate meaningfully to rooms of mixed perspectives.
Braver Conversations
Facilitation and Moderation
The Power of Storytelling
This training is available as a full curriculum, or topics a la carte as needed.
In 2021, multifamily real estate consultancy, Enoch & Co, partnered with Others to conduct a deep discovery for a client initiative to support financial vitality for low-income housing renters.
-
3
Studies
-
6+
Months
-
3
States
“The insights have been mind-blowing, to be perfectly frank.”
- Carol Enoch, CEO
What we found opened our eyes to the systemic obstacles and psycho-emotional barriers that many underbanked communities endure in their journey to financial freedom. Supplemented by interviews with experts in finance, housing, and social equity, our research unearthed a need for help which would meet underbanked residents where they are, but wouldn't leave them there. Now in the early stages of branding, this suite of services is being shaped and tested by the very voices which inspired them. Read the report from Enoch & Co.
