ABSTRACT
Time is always a concern for clients who are under pressure to produce products that will succeed in the market. This chapter presents three case studies explaining the value of rapid ethnography. In the first case, a study of parking enforcement, our client came to us with a specific product concept and wanted to use ethnography to inform its design. In the second case, a hospital had the general idea of supporting nurses and wanted us to identify specific problem areas where technology could assist them. In the third case, a client had the broad agenda of identifying new product opportunities in the area of mobile communication and used ethnography to discover gaps in the current set of offerings to generate ideas. These examples show the use of rapid ethnography for this wide range of uses, from informing the design of a specific product to identifying an opportunity for a new product concept.
