Contextual inquiry
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Contextual inquiry is a user-centered design (UCD) method, part of the contextual design methodology, that happens up front in the product development lifecycle. It calls for one-on-one observations of work practice in its naturally occurring context. During or after the observations, discussion ensues wherein users’ daily routines or processes are discovered so that a product or website can be best designed to either work with the processes or help to shorten or eliminate them altogether. Contextual inquiry comprises preparation, evaluation, analysis, and design phases.
Contextual inquiry involves collecting detailed information about customer work practice by observing and interviewing the user while they actually work. The researcher should stay in the background and let the user lead the situation as much as possible. This means that researcher tries to form a partnership with customer, i.e., learning (but not doing) as an apprentice while the customer is the master of the work. This helps the researcher understand the customer's work. The goal is to understand how and why something is done or why something is not done[1].
The Step-by-Step Guide to Contextual Techniques Use the questions to guide your thinking, and for each part, provide the following: key actions a person can take immediately potential pitfalls and how to deal with them relevant literature references
Deciding what to look at: How did you decide what to pay attention to when working with customers? Should you focus on the tool, the work, or a competitor's tool? How did you state the problem so the people who went on customer visits knew what to look for? What are the characteristics of a good project to start on?
Picking customers: How did you decide who to talk to? How did you locate them, contact them, and set up the visit? Did you use intermediaries, and if so who? Did you start with a friend or friendly customer? How many customers have you found to be enough to get started?
Running the interview: How did you run the customer interaction? How did you introduce yourself? How did you interrupt the work so you could talk about it? How did you record the interview? How long did it take?
Interpreting the data: How did you interpret the data? Did you get others to help? Did you use any tools to help with interpretation? What did you look for-design ideas, problems, delighters? How did you capture results?
Deciding how to act on results: Did you have to communicate results to someone else to act on? How did you generate design ideas for the product based on results? How did you use the data to defend your ideas? Were you successful in changing the product based on your data?
Communicating results: Did others need to know about the results? Did you try to communicate the method as well as the results? What got people hooked into using customer data? What got in the way of implementing results?[2]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Getting Started with Contextual Techniques [1]
- Contextual inquiry at UsabilityNet
- Contextual inquiry at the Usability Methods Toolbox
- Contextual Interviews at Usability.gov
- Getting Started with Contextual Techniques
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