method · all tools
Simple Ethnography
Depth · what it can open●●○○2 — reflective
Holding · facilitation2 — facilitator
Trust · group readiness★any
Disclosure · what is sharednone
Go where the users are: observers spend real time in the field — alone or in pairs — silently watching and recording what people actually do (not what they say they do), then debrief the observations together. The discipline is observation without premature interpretation; the payoff is empathy grounded in fact.
Hold with care
- The observed are people, not specimens — consent, transparency and reciprocity are part of the method, not compliance overhead
Practical
- Time
- 50-420 min
- Group
- 2–∞ · individual, pairs, small-group
- Settings
- in-person
- Materials
- Field sites and access agreements; notebooks, cameras, observation guide
- Mechanisms
- perspective-taking, open-awareness, systems-sensing
- Change scope
- state → skill · repeatable
Instructions
- Where
- liberatingstructures.com/simple-ethnography — Liberating Structures, open
- Availability
- Open online — published at the link, free to read
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
Source link checked 29 Aug 2026 — unchanged since we recorded it on 28 Aug 2026
This directory describes and points home; the instructions stay with the people who made them.
Origin
Henri Lipmanowicz & Keith McCandless — Liberating Structures; applied ethnography
In this directory via Liberating Structures
Related: Sensing Journey (pairs-with)
status: checked · added 2026-08-25