During 2006 Katya and I visited dozens of tasting rooms and did ethnographic research while tasting.  We wanted to blend into the environment and observe people’s habits, preferences, and activities.  We paid no attention to their wine preferences, only how they react to their experiences.

Our purpose was for product design inspiration.  We are unhappy with the residential interior products available for our lifestyle design preferences.  We are developing Intiri Designs to design and sell lifestyle residential products, focusing first on California Wine Country.

The ethnographic research results are confidential but that is when we realized that the experience of a wine tasting road trip is more important than the wine for something like 80% of the visitors to tasting rooms.   The concept behind Wine Questers developed during 2007 as we evaluated winery picnic sites and designed our California Wine Country table setting collection.

Ethnographic study is more commonly known as anthropoligists living with remote tribes and learning about them by integrating into their culture.  However, the same techniques work for market research and product design.  We observe then create hypotheses, test the hypotheses with conversations and further observations, and then use the results to influence our designs.

The objective of the research is to understand the lifestyle, design, and style preferences of tasters so we can create products that give them the opportunity to create their own wine country lifestyle at home.  We are a long way from knowing if we are succeeding, but at least this project is interesting.

- jim