Video Ethnography & Human Insight
Authentic Video explores how people experience brands, products and services in the context of everyday life. Through filmed interviews, observation, video diaries, shopalongs and in-context research, we capture what people do, how they feel and what shapes their decisions. The result is rich visual evidence that helps researchers, designers and organisations understand lived experience, identify meaningful patterns and communicate insight with greater impact.
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Why Video Ethnography?
Video ethnography captures behaviour, experience and decision-making in context. It reveals not only what people say, but what they do, how they interact and what influences them in everyday life. By turning observation and lived experience into visual evidence, it helps research findings feel more tangible, credible and memorable.
- Explore behaviour, rituals, practices and interactions
- Connect research findings with real-world context
- Build stakeholder understanding and empathy
Original Video Ethnography Promo - 2011
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From living rooms to boardrooms, Authentic Video captures the moments that matter—and the meaning behind them.
Created in 2011 for Real Ethnography, this original promotional film reflects an approach that continues to shape Authentic Video today: combining rigorous qualitative inquiry with natural, documentary-style storytelling. The film captures people in everyday settings and demonstrates how video can reveal the behaviours, relationships and context that sit behind research findings. More than a decade later, the tools and production methods have evolved, but the underlying principles remain the same—careful observation, authentic human stories and insight grounded in lived experience.
Bring Target Markets & Personas to Life
We partner with researchers, consultants and research agencies to bring target segments, customer groups and personas to life through rich, contextual video. Our work can explore behaviours, motivations, needs, frustrations, rituals, relationships and decision-making in real-world settings.
Depending on the project, we can support:
- Participant recruitment and briefing
- Discussion, observation and filming guides
- Video diaries, remote ethnography and other co-creation methods
- Professional filming in homes, workplaces, shops and community settings
- Editing that integrates qualitative insight, graphics and quantitative evidence
- Outputs tailored to research teams, clients and stakeholder audiences
Fields of Inquiry
Video ethnography can be applied across a wide range of research questions, from everyday behaviour and customer experience to cultural identity, emerging needs and social change. The following areas show how observational, participatory and documentary methods can generate richer insight in context.
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Video Immersions
We combine participant observation with documentary-style filming to explore everyday routines, environments and interactions as they unfold. This approach provides researchers, designers and strategists with rich contextual evidence that can support more grounded, human-centred decisions.
- Document behaviour and interaction in real-world settings
- Capture visual and experiential evidence beyond written reports
- Support participatory, ethnographic and human-centred research
- Connect fieldwork findings with stakeholder understanding
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Customer Experience
We use observational and reflexive video methods—including eye-tracking where appropriate—to explore customer experience as it unfolds. This provides a clearer view of behaviour, decision-making, attention, emotion and friction across physical and digital environments. The resulting visual evidence can support service design, product development and customer experience strategy.
- Capture in-the-moment interactions across physical and digital environments
- Use eye-tracking to explore attention patterns and cognitive load
- Identify friction points, workarounds and unmet needs
- Strengthen qualitative findings with clear visual evidence
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Consumer Subcultures
We use video ethnography to explore the values, language, rituals, identities and shared practices that shape consumer subcultures. By spending time with people in context, we can understand not only what they buy or use, but how products, services and brands become part of belonging, self-expression and everyday life.
- Explore group identity, language, rituals and shared meaning
- Understand how communities influence behaviour and decision-making
- Identify emerging needs, tensions and cultural shifts
- Translate complex social worlds into clear, engaging insight
Co-creation at the heart of our approach!
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- Capture authentic first-person perspectives
- Build trust through participant-led storytelling
- Guide contributors with project-specific filming instructions
- Work flexibly across homes, communities and digital environments
- Generate rich narrative insight from everyday life
We design and direct auto-ethnographic video programs in which participants become co-creators, documenting their own lives, routines and reflections. Bespoke how-to videos can guide contributors through filming, framing and thematic focus, helping them feel confident while producing material that is relevant, consistent and grounded in lived experience.
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Video Ethnography Training
Practical coaching and workshops help researchers, insight teams and organisations build confidence in planning, filming, analysing and presenting video ethnography. Training can be tailored to individual researchers, project teams or organisations and adapted to a specific study, capability need or communication challenge.
Research Design & Fieldwork
- Plan video ethnography projects and participant activities
- Develop filming, observation and interview guides
- Capture useful contextual, behavioural and cultural evidence
Analysis & Interpretation
- Review footage systematically
- Identify patterns, tensions, behaviours and meaning
- Connect visual evidence with broader qualitative findings
Video Storytelling & Presentation
- Select the strongest moments and quotations
- Shape short clips, thematic reels and documentary-style outputs
- Present visual evidence clearly and responsibly to stakeholders
Nick Agafonoff has more than 25 years’ experience designing and delivering video ethnography projects across UX, customer experience, shopper research, service design, consumer and market research, innovation, new product development, and brand and communication strategy.
Experience & Credentials
More than 25 years of commercial video ethnography experience, supported by industry involvement, published work, training and thousands of filmed interviews and immersions.
Industry Accredited
- Member of The Research Society
- Contributor to the international EPIC community
Published
- Published in the Qualitative Market Research Journal
- Contributor to the Handbook of Anthropology in Business
4000+ video Immersions
- Conducted across a wide range of industries and consumer categories
- Delivered in collaboration with research agencies, consultants and client teams
Video Ethnography Training
- Workshops delivered at major industry and international research conferences
- Internal training for research, marketing, innovation and design teams
Innovator in Practice
- Early application of video ethnography within commercial qualitative research
- Development of reflexive, participatory and iterative methods for insight and storytelling
Public & Social Reseach
- Video-led research supporting government, corporate, media and public-awareness projects
- Ethnographic and qualitative election research
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Ready to uncover deeper, more authentic insight?
Tell us about the people, behaviours or experiences you want to understand. We can help identify the right combination of filmed interviews, observation, video diaries, co-creation and documentary storytelling for your research project. Share a little about what you are planning, and we can discuss the most useful approach.