Building a User Observatory:
From Ethnographic Insights to
Effective Recommendations
Valérie Bauwens

Swisscom | [e-mail]

 

It has been nine years since I last heard a statement like this: “Users’ opinions don’t matter. They don’t know what they want, anyway. Let’s just throw the technology on the market and check the reaction.” The tone at Swisscom now is radically different, and our User Observatory method is considered a competitive tool. We have grown and evolved significantly during this time. This article will retrace part of the User Observatory journey and share some of the tricks we have learned along the way about how to set up and manage an observatory within a large corporation.

invest in learning about users and user research approaches.

Sowing the Seeds—Get Attention
With a degree in business
administration, I worked for 10
years in finance, eventually writ-
ing business plans in Swisscom’s
R&D department. The revenue
curves always tended to look
the same: They had to rocket
upward. Our market analysis
always fit nicely into value
chains, and user needs were
always aligned into tables. A
user segment would get a full
moon when their needs were
fulfilled. If the segment couldn’t
be satisfied, they would just get a
crescent. When three half-moons
aligned, our analysis was on the
mark. Although it was a styl-
ish, organized, rational flow of
argumentation on how to tackle
a market, doubts started to
emerge. At that time Swisscom
did not conduct systematic user
research, apart from conven-
tional market research, some
usability testing, and interviews.
Field observations were almost
non-existent. And personally, I
didn’t know much about them.

Setting the Scene—Surprise

Starting in 2004, we acquired
as many user research projects
as we possibly could and left
the lab for the field to conduct
interviews and observations, cre-
ating a “wow effect.” Swisscom
realized it was receiving reliable
information that reflected real
user behavior and explained our
customers’ actions. Moreover, the
information was useful. In other
words, we could translate the
findings we made into concrete
innovation suggestions with
immediate impact on products
and services. As the former head
of strategy put it, “No more gar-
bage! Let’s get rid of these gener-
alities about users that reassure
our industry. Finally, relevant
and actionable answers for our
business. Good sense!”
As a direct consequence of
these positive experiences,
we managed to get approval
from management to start a
longitudinal study on the com-
munication and entertainment
habits of residential custom-
ers. This breakthrough became
the beginning of what we now
call the User Observatory. The
scene was set. We had a top
producer and many enthusias-

September + October 2010