Ethnography involves observing the way users interact with an existing system. This is particularly useful when users are unable to fully articulate their needs, or are too busy to attend other types of elicitation meetings. Studying how a user currently performs a task, and noting problems and possible areas of improvement, can lead to identifying real user requirements that might otherwise have been missed. It can be particularly enlightening to observe shortcuts and work-arounds that may have been developed by power users, because these often offer insights into their real needs.