Shadowing is a bit of a mix between an interview and an observation session. In a shadowing session, the researcher becomes the shadow of the person he tries to better understand.

During a typical shadowing session, a user receives a task to perform. While they perform this task, the user is asked to think out loud to reveal what is he/she is thinking at every step. The researcher or service designer usually records this by taking notes, photographs, or filming the user. The researcher might also ask the user in the middle of the task or after the shadowing session why they did something in particular.

A shadowing session has the advantage of an observation session where you see the real behavior of a person. It also has another big advantages of the interview, to enable the service designer to ask follow up questions to better understand a specific moment in the service interaction.

A shadowing session is something that is again quite costly and time-consuming since you have to recruit the people to be shadowed. Every shadowing session might take one hour to a full day.

I've answered common questions that people have about the shadowing research method.

This article is part of my free course, "What is Service Design?" which helps you to discover what Service Design is and why it is powerful to enhance the customer experience.