Methodology · Mobile Ethnography

See life as it actually happens, in their kitchens, on their commutes, at the moment of choice.

Mobile ethnography with Indeemo means in-context capture on participants' own phones – days or weeks of real life, in their environments, at ethnographic depth across dozens or hundreds of participants. Not what they remember. What actually happens.

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Woman recording video on her phone while outside on the street.
Why Mobile Ethnography With Indeemo

Three things mobile ethnography with Indeemo gives you

‍

Ethnographic depth at scale

Run dozens of participants across multiple markets in the same fielding window, with the same in-context richness you'd get from in-person home visits. Multi-modal capture (video, photo, screen recording, text) in their own environments, on their own phones.

Flex to your timeline

Run a one-day study to capture a specific moment of behaviour. Run across weeks or months to catch how behaviour shifts with context, season, or condition. Indeemo flexes to whatever the question demands and whatever the deadline allows.

No researcher in the room

The participant isn't performing for an observer. The kitchen isn't tidied for a visit. The data is what they'd have done anyway – not a curated version of it.

How It Works With Indeemo

A mobile ethnography study, end to end

Four stages, one platform – from plan to deliver.
Woman working at laptop.
01
Plan
Recruit through screening, scheduling and consent from your own panel, our network, or a partner list. Cohort by market, household type, behaviour pattern. Then design tasks that fit life: prompts scheduled across the study window, mixed capture types, cadence built around the rhythm you're trying to surface. The right people, with tasks built around what you actually need to learn.
Group of friends holding hands at park.
02
Capture
Participants share through an Instagram-style app – familiar, low-friction, on the device they already carry everywhere. Environmental scans, screen recordings, daily diaries – captured as moments happen. Behaviour captured where and when it actually happens.
Girl infront of laptop working.
03
Analyse
Auto-transcription and translation across 30+ languages. Theme detection that links each insight to a clip, a participant, a timestamp. OCR on packaging, search across every brand mention. Researcher in the loop. Every theme traceable back to its source.
Group of colleagues laughing, while sitting around a table together.
04
Deliver
Highlight reels in-platform with subtitling, observer access for stakeholders, clips ready to export. The CMO watches a 90-second cut and feels it. The brand team sees the moment of choice.
Where Indeemo Fits

How Indeemo fits mobile ethnography work

‍
Dimension
Common approach
What Indeemo adds
Reach
A researcher visits homes in person, in a single location, over a set fieldwork period.
Many homes across multiple markets, in the same fielding week.
Method
The researcher is present in the room, observing and asking questions in the moment.
A native app on the participant's own phone, in their own home, on their own time.
Capture
Researcher notes, photos, and recordings gathered during each visit.
Moments as they happen: a photo of breakfast, a video of using the product, a screen recording of the search, a text reflection at the end of the day.
Output
A written debrief and findings synthesised by the researcher.
Ethnographic depth, cohorts you can compare side-by-side, evidence stakeholders can see for themselves.
Inside The Study

Example tasks across four research domains

Product experience

A 90–120-second selfie video, captured on day one of trial. "Open the box of [new product] and walk us through your first five minutes. What you reach for first, what stumps you, what you do without thinking."

Shopper journey

A 60–90-second selfie video plus environmental scan, captured in-aisle. "Next time you're at the supermarket, film the aisle as you walk it. Narrate what catches your eye and what you walk past. You don't have to buy anything."

Healthcare & patient experience

A short text reflection, captured post-appointment. "After your appointment, write a quick reflection: what the clinician said, what you're still unsure about, what you'll do differently tomorrow."

Behind the algorithm

A three-minute screen recording, captured in an open-prompt window. "Open TikTok and screen-record your first three minutes of scrolling. Pause when you see anything that feels off-brand for you and tell us why."

"What we wanted was something much more organic, women feeding their thoughts and insights more freely so we could really surface emerging trends and get their perspective on what's important."

Kate McEnery Evans headshot.
Kate McEnery-Evans
Head of Agency, Think Stylist
two friends drinking take away coffee outside a store.
two friends drinking take away coffee outside a store.
Who Runs Mobile Ethnography With Indeemo

Built for the teams who need real life as evidence

Insights & Research

Replace claimed behaviour with captured behaviour. Bring stakeholders evidence they can see for themselves – in context, in motion, in their own words.

For insights teams

Brand & Marketing

See the brand in the moment of choice. The cultural fit, the emotional pull, the basket decision, captured where it actually happens.

For brand teams

Product & Innovation

See what people actually do with the prototype, the packaging, the new flavour – in the kitchen, the bathroom, the car, wherever real use happens.

For product teams

Patient & Clinical Research

Capture how patients live with conditions, take medication, and navigate care, alongside what they're able to articulate at appointments.

For clinical & patient teams
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Mobile ethnography, answered

How long should a mobile ethnography study run?
It depends on what you're tracking. A short window catches the weekday rhythm; a longer window catches weekday vs. weekend; longer still lets a behaviour pattern stabilise. Indeemo supports studies of any length, from a single day to multi-month longitudinal mobile ethnographies for innovation pipelines and patient journeys.
How many participants do I need?
For a single-market qualitative study, 10 to 20 participants is typical. Multi-market or segmented studies scale from there to whatever the study needs, without losing depth.
What's the difference between mobile ethnography and a diary study?
They're cousins. Mobile ethnography emphasises the spatial and environmental, the home, the shelf, the route, with heavy use of video and environmental scans. Diary studies emphasise the temporal and reflective, the daily entry, the cumulative pattern. Most Indeemo studies blend both.
Will participants actually engage for a week or more?
The app is designed to feel like Instagram, not a survey tool: familiar and low-friction, which keeps participants engaged. Researchers can also send in-platform follow-ups to keep the conversation alive across multi-week studies.
Can I run mobile ethnography across multiple markets and languages?
Yes. Capture in 30+ languages, with AI transcription and translation handling cross-market comparability. Run all markets in parallel during the same fielding window.
Is the data secure and consent-compliant?
Yes. Indeemo is ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certified, GDPR-aligned, with EU and US data residency options. Consent is captured in a single flow at participant onboarding, before any capture begins. Per study, researchers can enable identity masking with facial blurring of participants, applied at ingest.
How does mobile ethnography compare to AI-moderated interviews?
AI-moderated interviews are recall-based, an AI asks questions and the participant answers from memory. Mobile ethnography with Indeemo is in-context, the participant captures real life as it happens, on their own phone, in their own environment. The wedge is "see what they do, not just what they say." For most behavioural and contextual research, that distinction matters.
What kind of analysis output do I get?
Tagged clips, AI-detected themes, cross-cohort comparisons, highlight reels, transcripts in any language, and a fully searchable repository. Stakeholders can be given observer access to watch the data live, or receive a 90-second cut for the boardroom.

See mobile ethnography in action.

Book a personalised demo and we'll walk you through a real Indeemo mobile ethnography – from task brief to highlight reel.

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