Contextual Inquiry
Katayoon Etemad
November 2007
Outline
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Contextual design
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Customer Data
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Partnership
Contextual inquiry principles
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context
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Partnership
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Interpretation
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Focus
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Interview Structure
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Example
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Contextual Design
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A customer-centered design method
customer
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Developed by Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt
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Why customer data is important?
http://students.ou.edu/R/Basil.G.Rayan-1/
http://students.ou.edu/R/Basil.G.Rayan-1/
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How gather data from customer?
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Methodology:
Contextual Inquiry
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What is Contextual Inquiry?
Go where the customer works
 Observe customer as she works
 Talk to the customer about the work
 customer
Gather data
interviewer
 Interpret the observations
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Define the relationship model

What kind of model works better?
Does
her job
Teacher
Answers
Asks
Observes
Student
questions
Master Apprentice
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Principles for Contextual Inquiry
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Context
Partnership
Interpretation
Focus
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What is the context principle?
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
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Principles:
• Context
• Partnership
• Interpretation
• Focus
Being physically present
Ongoing experience vs. summery
Concrete vs. abstract
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Partnership
Principles:
• Context
• Partnership
• Interpretation
• Focus
Be collaborators
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Principles:
• Context
• Partnership
• Interpretation
• Focus
Avoid Interviewer/Interviewee
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You aren’t there to get a list of questions answered.
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Problem: questions are not related to ongoing work
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Solution: return to ongoing work and break the silence.
Question
Answer
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Avoid Expert/Novice
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You aren’t there to answer questions
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Problem: you won’t be able to observe
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Solution: Step out of the expert role
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Principles:
• Context
• Partnership
• Interpretation
• Focus
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Avoid Guest/Host


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Principles:
• Context
• Partnership
• Interpretation
• Focus
It is a goal for interviewer to be noisy
Problem: the customer stops doing her job
Solution: stop it and return to your real role
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Interpretation
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Observation is not enough
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Assign meaning to the observation
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Share your interpretations with customer
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Principles:
• Context
• Partnership
• Interpretation
• Focus
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Focus
Principles:
• Context
• Partnership
• Interpretation
• Focus

Keep the conversation on topics

Don’t give control entirely back to the customer
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Interview Structure
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They share a structure:
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The conventional interview
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The transition
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The contextual interview proper
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The wrap-up
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Contextual Inquiry In Practice
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Setting project focus
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Designing the interviewing situation
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Deciding who to interview
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• Setting project focus
• Designing the interviewing situation
• Deciding who to interview
Setting project focus
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What is the work we expect to support?
How does this work fit into the customers work life?
What are the key work tasks?
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• Setting project focus
• Designing the interviewing situation
• Deciding who to interview
Designing the interviewing situation
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Where does the work happen physically?
What is the cultural and social context in which the work
happens?
How do I get close to the work?
How close can I get?
How do I create a shared interpretation with the
customer?
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• Setting project focus
• Designing the interviewing situation
• Deciding who to interview
Deciding who to interview
 Who is involved in making the work happen?
 Who are the informal helpers?
 Who provides the information needed to do the job?
 Who uses the results?
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Example
Sharing Digital Photographs in the
Home through Physical
Mementos, Souvenirs, and Keepsakes
Michael Nunes, Saul Greenberg and Carman
Neustaedter
Department of Computer Science, University
of Calgary
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Hiking Trip to Alaska
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• Setting project focus
• Designing the interviewing situation
• Deciding who to interview
Setting project focus
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How people used and stored mementos in the home;
Get people’s reactions to the Souvenirs concept;
How it could be improved.
How they used mementos,
Their reactions to a video of Souvenirs in use
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• Setting project focus
• Designing the interviewing situation
• Deciding who to interview
Designing the interviewing situation
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Interviews were held in participants’ homes
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To recall and describe their routines for photograph
storage and sharing in context.
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To gain a first-hand view of how these practices fit in the
private environment.
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• Setting project focus
• Designing the interviewing situation
• Deciding who to interview
Deciding who to interview
 20 participant homes within the city of Calgary, Canada.
 The homes spanned a range of lifestyles:
 Variety of occupations:
Dentists,
Graduate students,
Bank managers.
Household sizes: ranging from two to six members,
Ages: from teenagers to adults in their 50’s.
 For pragmatic reasons children under 14 were not interviewed.
Additionally, participant homes were selected which owned at least one camera
and took pictures on a fairly regular basis.
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Contextual Interview
http://www.elonavangent.com/
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How non-digital and digital photos were organized,
displayed, and shared within and outside the home.
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What types of souvenirs they collected,
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What memories were associated with these,
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How they displayed them in the home.
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The location and the types of photographs and souvenirs
they kept.
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Contextual Interview

Show families a video demonstration of
Souvenirs.
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What they thought of it,
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How they might see themselves using it,
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What they disliked or might want to see
changed or added to it.
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Data Collection and Analysis
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Audio record,
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Handwritten notes,
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Affinity diagramming.
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Findings:
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digital vs. print photography,
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Souvenirs and mementos,
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reactions to our system design.
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www.infodesign.com.au/usabilityresources
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Thank you
Questions
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