Video ethnography with an under-researched population
The challenge
A US financial services company wanted to understand the needs of their elderly users. But, more than that, they also wanted to help teams empathise with their needs so that they would bear them in mind when designing future products and services. They therefore wanted deliverables that would encourage empathy-building.
What we did
We used a video ethnography approach to both surface their needs and to capture them in engaging fashion.
We spent time with elderly users (defined as 80+ for the purposes of this study) in their homes, getting to know them as people and as users of financial services.
To capture as high quality footage as possible we structured the sessions around the filming as much as the research, while still taking care to ensure that participants felt as comfortable as possible.
This meant taking time at the beginning of each session to choose an appropriate filming location, to set up the camera and mic, and to test for audio and video quality.
It also meant preparing a shot list alongside the discussion guide to make sure that we captured everything that we needed from each session.
Somewhat unexpectedly, giving equal weight to the filming and the research-gathering also benefited the research. At the end of each session we spent time filming the participants engaging in some of the activities they mentioned during their interviews, such as checking their accounts or playing solitaire. While this was initially just for b-roll, we often elicited further insights from these moments.
What we found
Overall, we found that elderly users are active protagonists in their lives rather than the ‘passive cyphers’ they are often portrayed as.
This extends to their relationship with technology and finance, with most able to achieve their goals with a minimum of fuss. Nonetheless, we were able to identify several areas where more could be done to serve them better, from supporting them across a plurality of channels (both digital and analogue), to helping them plan for the future (retirement can be a tricky balancing act between enjoying the fruits of one’s labour and saving for an undetermined future).
The outcome
We produced a 10 minute film focusing on 5 of the participants we spoke to, and an accompanying report aggregating insights from all 10 of the interviews. This was presented to all Product and Design teams in a specially convened meeting. As a result of the study, explicit consideration of elderly users was integrated into their design processes.
The study also helped to demonstrate the value of ethnographic methods and research video to internal teams, which inspired several further briefs.