Artifacts of this environment will reveal unspoken particulars of the lives being led. Synthesis Ethnography in product development means discovering new cultural understandings and synthesizing these understandings into the design of products, services and communications. This activity takes place in parallel with discovery. Keeping both sides of the problem open ensures that the end result resonates with the consumer's culture rather than the producer's culture. The end product of synthesis is a set of symbolic models.
Symbolic models are concise and memorable, and act as the stepping stones to new ideas.
These symbolic models can be embodied in a variety of ways, such as phrases, three-dimensional forms, mock ads, metaphors or principles. In the example of the Macintosh Finder, the desktop metaphor is an embodiment of the underlying symbolic model. Looking for patterns and telling stories requires experience, insight, creativity and intuition. Some individuals don't fall into this paradigm, of course, and may make excellent synthesists regardless of background. This approach requires us to wrap a story around what seems to be an incoherent, discontinuous set of intellectual abstractions.