Service design’s purpose is to create happier consumer/client through enhanced functionality of services provided by a company. It takes into account not only clients’ perspective and experience but also their perception of services and products. Perception is usually multi-dimensional – it includes visual, interactive and functional aspects.

In order to plan a strategy for improvement, clients’ experience and perspective need to be thoroughly analysed, described and transformed into practical measures which can be implemented in the company’s environment.

After a few decades of strong faith in statistical models and quantitative research tools present in the media and corporate contexts, service designers are moving away from that approach. By observing firms’ relationships with their clients and by listening to what the clients have to say they realised that availing of a variety of ethnographic research techniques is a much more effective way of looking for information they need.

One of the main benefits of using ethnographic approach is its holistic nature. It does not focus on numbers and figures but on features and qualities of an observed subject. Ethnographic tools allow for a comprehensive detailed description of a researched problem. But what are these tools?

The main and most commonly used ones include:

- direct, participating observation – it allows the researcher to not only interact with people he’s observing but also put himself in their shoes, experience the context in which they live and think. All of this helps him understand their behaviour and way of thinking.

- interviews – they can be structured, based on a pre-prepared questionnaire or in-depth – this type of technique lets the researcher discuss a specific problem, gives a respondent to talk about themselves and to tell stories from their lives. Again this technique gives an interviewer an insight in their respondents, life, experiences and preferences.

Of course these tools can be customized and service designers often combine a few different techniques to achieve maximum effectiveness. E.g. a company employees could attend group sessions where they would discuss their relationships with their clients, then they could go through a role-playing exercise and end with a brainstorming session on visual elements of customer-company contact points.