Contextual Inquiry

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Contextual Inquiry

• learning from users in the field

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Agenda

• Questions
• Discuss homework 1
• Learning from users
• observation
• interview

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Homework 1
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Contextual Design

• Defining Customer-Center Systems
• Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt
• Ethnography light design
• Inquiry - Work modeling - Consolidation -
  Work redesign - User environment design -
  Mock up and test

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Square 1

• What do you know?
• Where not to start
• Marketing data
• Detailed surveys
• Jumping into design
• Asking the customer

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Knowing your user

• Understand underlying structure / goals / values
  
• Make tacit knowledge explicit
• Train your intuition
• Enable tech transfer
• Apprentice model

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Observation

• You just landed on planet X
• Teach someone to drive in a conf room
• People use knowledge in the world
• Lots of non-verbal details
• Listen to the language
• Videotaping

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Interviews

• Observation grounds interviews
• Keeping the interview open
• Cheat sheets
• Avoid summaries, abstractions
• Create interpretations together
• What should I have asked?
• Tape recording

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Other techniques

• Exercises
• Sorting, ordering
• Focus groups
• Reaction to prototypes
• Surveys
• Detailed data, evaluation

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Triangulation

• Multiple viewpoints
• Different types of data
• Discover bias
• Better data
• Shared understanding

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Consent

• Subjects informed agreement
• What will happen?
• What are the benefits / risks?
• Withdrawl at any time is allowed
• Guardian consent
• Education project exempt
• Samples on co-web

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Upcoming

• Monday (9/10) Task Analysis
• Wednesday (9/12) Motor behavior, Predictive
  models
• Friday (9/14) Videos
• Monday (9/17) Cognitive Models
• Wednesday (9/19) GOMS, User Models
• Friday (9/21) Project Part 1 Due