Cinéma Vérité

According to Parlez-vous.com, Realism is the artistic attempt to recreate life as it is in the context of an artistic medium.

Cinéma Vérité, literally film truth, was a style of film making developed by French film directors in the 1960’s. Filming was done with unobtrusive cameras so the subjects of the film would forget the presence of the camera and just be themselves. The filmmakers goal was to show life as it really is using the film as his or her artistic medium (see Parlez-vous.com.

What do Realism and Cinéma Vérité have to do with innovation? Well, they should be considered when it comes to observing people and interactions between them and people, things and environments. If people know they are being observed then their behaviour is affected. Practitioners of Cinéma Vérité sometimes resorted to using empty cameras for weeks in advance of the commencement of shooting in order for the people being documented to forget about their presence. No matter how long such an effort may have lasted, the presence of the camera can never be forgotten completely nor can the behaviour of the observed be completely trusted as natural.
Having said that, it is still one of the best methods of understanding people in the daily lives. It just can't be taken as absolute truth.

Many of us have seen or heard the results of focus groups used to determine consumer needs and solicit input/feedback. Some have resorted to in-home user parties to mitigate the clinical feel of focus groups. Others have shifted to observations of people in the environment where the behaviour to be observed naturally occurs. To extend that effort, the observations are tied to impressions given from those same people. This helps to link the explicit with the implicit.

No matter the method of observation, we can't forget if people know they are being observed then their natural tendencies will be affected to some degree.