I hear it all the time. Because product field research is expensive and time-consuming, most start-ups and smaller businesses can't afford to do it. Yep, it's a common assumption - and completely misguided. The question isn't whether can you afford it. Instead, if your business success hinges on a great product experience, you have to ask if you can afford not to conduct field research.

But hey...we all want to have our cake and eat it, too. The good news is it's possible to conduct time- and cost-effective field research. The key is to be selective in the research scope. We can't afford to spend weeks with users in their natural environments. So we embrace constraints and focus on uncovering just a few critical issues. That's important or else we take the chance of opening ourselves up to that pernicious problem of scope creep.

Now here's the rub: since we're condensing the field research, it's absolutely important to use researchers who know how to perform almost Sherlockian abilities for observation. Remember, we're not just trying to understand how a customer uses a product...we're trying to understand the customer herself. To this point, I like what Kantner and Kiernan write:

Field research is more than usability testing in the field. It is more than learning how someone uses a product. It is learning about the person: how she accomplishes tasks within her own environment, what motivates her to use a product a certain way, and what she naturally does to compensate for what the product does not help her accomplish. This research builds a deeper understanding of the relationship between users' work and their environment, resulting in designs that increase user satisfaction with products. (1)

What does your field research program look like? Does it go deeper than usability testing? What are you doing right now to understand the person who is using your products?

(1) Kantner, L., and Keirnan, T. (2003). Field research in commercial product development, In the Proceedings of the 2003 Annual Conference of the Usability Professionals' Association (2003). Scottsdale, AZ: UPA. [download PDF]

What I love about anthropology is its focus on deeply understanding people within the natural environment of their everyday lives. We look at how they construct meaning from their experiences and their surroundings. And as an anthropologist and marketer, I'm intensely passionate about the interactions between consumers and products.    

Once upon a time, the connection between marketing and anthropology might have been confined to the edges of business thinking. Not anymore, though...it's clearly moving to the mainstream. This was one of the discussion topics at a recent Forrester Roundtable here in Austin: 

Takeaway #2: Stop Asking Your Customers What They Do. Really? Tech marketers are obsessed with surveys — so why should we do something different? According to Markman, “If you’re trying to uncover why customers act, they can tell you what they’re doing, but are likely unaware of the human factors that are influencing them, and no survey will every capture that.” So what then?

He urged tech marketers to spend more non-selling time on-site, observing how their buyers and users go about their day. They should start with three areas: 1) personal information consumption methods; 2) organizational technology decision-making rituals; and 3) habits they’ve developed with your competitors.

WIM:Do more field work and break out of the tech marketer survey-obsessed habit. Instead of inviting customers to your next Customer Advisory Board meeting, ask them to host you for a day of shadowing. It may seem farfetched and even difficult, but if you’re serious about embedding your products and services into instinctive actions for your customers, break with traditional thinking, find a way, and begin a new habit.

Josh Duncan over at A Random Job also posted his write-up of this session:
http://www.arandomjog.com/2011/10/getting-your-customers-to-stop-thinking-of-you

Habits, rituals, and meanings...all good stuff from an anthropological perspective.