A penetrating eye
on patient insights

Finding new and effective ways of analysing the everyday reality of patients’ lives is a major challenge today.

However Naked Eye claims a unique approach in this arena. It applies film-making and ethnographic research to the healthcare ecosystem, supporting behavioural insight and R&D innovation projects in the process. The company specialises in revealing highly nuanced behaviour to help organisations understand people and the minutiae of their individual worlds.

Naked Eye’s film producer and ethnographer, Nick Leon, explains why the company’s techniques expose a whole new world of detailed information: “Our belief is that the principles of ethnography – the method anthropologists use to study people – offer organisations an invaluable way to see behaviour and appreciate how people really live their lives.”

The company’s guiding principle is empathy. Ethnographers need to build trusting relationships quickly, while continually using empathy as a frame of reference.

“We need to see the world from another person’s perspective and that means listening with real intent,” Leon emphasises. “Critically, it also involves recognising what is not being said. Much of the work lies in unlocking big truths that can radically transform the lives of people in the future.”

A key advantage lies with the firm’s infrastructure. The team is composed of people from different countries, who speak different languages and have a variety of cultural backgrounds. Consequently, each expert brings an individual skill set.

This tapestry of talents includes anthropology, documentary film-making, qualitative research and, more recently, virtual reality (VR) storytelling. These abilities all orbit around the ethnographic film-making which make Naked Eye’s vision so compelling.

The panorama never stops evolving and embracing tomorrow’s technological advances is part of the job, Leon points out.

Indeed, VR and 360-degree film-making have been hugely positive disruptors of the status quo and he believes that its influence on understanding the world of patient experience will grow exponentially. “We have been completely blown away by the possibilities of VR,” he continues. “It allows viewers to ‘literally’ step into the shoes of other people and experience their world.”

As the pandemic shows signs of subsiding, however, the team is looking forward to conducting face-to-face ethnography too. He reflects, “As we begin to emerge from the effects of COVID-19 it’s a good time to take a deep breath and assess the changes. What will it take to help people recover and move forward? It’s time to reconnect with people, learn and discover.”

Prior to the chaos caused by the pandemic, Naked Eye carried out ethnography with an award-winning disability activist in South Africa.

This individual was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy at the age of two and given only five years to live. Against all the odds he survived and is planning to transcend not just his body, but the world itself.

As part of its initial visit the company filmed him speaking at the World Economic Forum, as an advisory member of the United Nations on sustainability. He is now campaigning to become the first person with a physical disability to travel into outer space!