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.