A national foundation invested in early childhood development wanted to understand whether a free parenting app—designed to promote brain-building activities during everyday moments—was actually reaching and resonating with parents. The app had strong institutional backing and a compelling premise, but the foundation lacked direct insight into how real families experienced the product in the context of their daily lives.

In 2019, team of mechanical engineers set out to design farming equipment for rural cassava farmers deep in the Brazilian Amazon. Positioned at the crossroads between design engineering and social impact, they recognized the risk that even a well-intentioned solution could fail to take root if it was not responsive to the local context. They saw this as an opportunity to innovate on not only the equipment itself, but on the process they used for generating mechanical solutions to social problems.

For many of the most important and challenging endeavors that organizations social sector face, the question is not just what’s happening? but why is this happening? and how does it feel to live this way? This is, i think, the true power of an ethnographic approach.

This year's season of the Premier League (England’s top tier of club soccer) is nearing its midpoint, and millions of supporters gather each week in pubs, living rooms, and internet forums, engaging in what might be my personal favorite demonstration of modern community.