contextual inquiry

User Research

Media Design course

Autumn 2016

Contextual Inquiry

INDEX

1. Introduction

2. Contextual Inquiry

3. Qualitative user research during contextual inquiry

3.1. Ethnography

3.2. Interviews

3.3. Literature review

3.4. Self-documenting practices

3.5. Participatory Design methods

User definition

1. INTRODUCTION

Need to distinguish between different parties

•  End-user

•  Indirect users

•  Managers

•  Customers

The context of use

1. INTRODUCTION

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/which-ux-research-methods/

1. INTRODUCTION

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/which-ux-research-methods/

2. CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY

Contextual Inquiry is a user-centered design research method.

It can be understood as:- an ethnographic interviewing technique (Beyer, & Holtzblatt, 1997)

- from a wider perspective, as the first phase of the research-based design process (Leinonen,Toikkanen, & Silvfast, 2008).

Contextual Design

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2nd-ed/contextual-design


Research-based design

Research-based design (Leinonen et al., 2008; Leinonen, 2010)


Different levels of knowledge about experience are accessed by different techniques (Sleeswijk V., et al., 2005)


Levels of knowledge

3. QUALITATIVE USER RESEARCH DURING CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY

Qualitative research helps understanding (Cooper et al., 2007):

•  Behaviors and attitudes of potential end-users

•  Technical, business and environmental contexts of the product to be

designed

•  Vocabulary and other social aspects connected to the contexts

•  How existing products are used


Inform them about:

•  Investigation aims

•  For whom is the research made

•  Confidentiality of the information provided by the users

•  Rewards

Considerations when involving users


•  Ethnography

•  Interviews

•  Literature review

•  Self-documenting practices

•  Participatory design methods

Methods

Observations in a Primary school in Oulu.

3. 1. ETHNOGRAPHY

3. 1. ETHNOGRAPHY

•  Field work done in natural settings.

•  Study of the large picture in order to capture a complete context of

the activity.

•  Rich descriptions of people, environments and interactions

•  Emphasis in understanding activities from the informants’ point of

view.

Ethnographic research can be characterized by:

3. 1. ETHNOGRAPHY

Planning of observation sessions-  Define objectives and information requirements-  Define times, places and people to observe-  Decide how to record the data

Running the sessions

-  Inform observers about the study-  Try to be unobtrusive-  Document in situ: notes, recordings, photographs…-  Write down first impressions just after the observation session

3.2. INTERVIEWS

Image published by Flickr user “Eelso”.

3. 2. INTERVIEWS

Potential interviewees

•  Stakeholders

•  Subject Matter Experts

•  Customers

•  End-users

3. 2. INTERVIEWS

The persona hypothesis

Based on behavior patterns and the factors that differentiate these patterns.

Images published by Flickr user “Nic Walter”.

Interview guidelines

•  Interview where the interaction happens

•  Avoid a fixed set of questions

•  Focus on the goal first, tasks second

•  Avoid making the user a designer

•  Avoid discussion of technology

•  Avoid leading questions

•  Ask for stories, demonstrations and a tour

•  Direct the interview as new issues arise Interpretation: read between the

lines

3. 2. INTERVIEWS

Interview questions

3. 2. INTERVIEWS

•  Goal-oriented

•  System-oriented

•  Workflow-oriented

•  Attitude-oriented

Questions should be open and neutral

Types (Cooper et al., 2007): ?

Interview questions

GOAL ORIENTED

•  Goals: What makes a good day? A bad day?

•  Opportunity: What activities currently waste your time?

•  Priorities: What is most important to you?

•  Information: What helps you make decisions?

3. 2. INTERVIEWS

Interview questions

SYSTEM ORIENTED

•  Function: What are the most common things you do with the product?

•  Frequency: What parts of the product do you use most?

•  Preference: What are your favorite aspects of the product? What drives you

crazy?

•  Failure: How do you work around problems?

•  Expertise: What shortcuts do you employ?

3. 2. INTERVIEWS

Interview questions

WORKFLOW ORIENTED

•  Process: What did you do when you first came in today? And after that?

•  Occurrence and recurrence: How often do you do this? What things do

you do weekly or monthly, but not every day?

•  Exception: What constitutes a typical day? What would be an unusual

event?

3. 2. INTERVIEWS

Interview questions

ATTITUDE ORIENTED

•  Aspiration: What do you see yourself doing five years from now?

•  Avoidance: What would you prefer not to do? What do you procrastinate

on?

•  Motivation: What do you enjoy most about your job (or lifestyle)? What do

you always tackle first?

3. 2. INTERVIEWS

Focus groups

•  A form of group interviewing that places the emphasis on participants’ interaction.

•  It usually includes 5 to 10 interviewees.

•  It is used to discuss user needs and requirements for a new product.

3. 2. INTERVIEWS

•  Moderation and data recording are key.

Image published in wikimedia by user “Ldorfman”

3.3. LITERATURE REVIEW

Consists of:

•  Business documents•  Technology specifications•  Research articles•  Information published in media &

social media

Benchmarking of similar products (competitive review)

Diary studies

In diary studies, users self-report about their behaviors, activities and experiences over a period of time

Image published by Flickr user “Gunnar Bothner-by”.

3.4. SELF-DOCUMENTING PRACTICES

Invite people to reflect on and express their experiences, feelings and attitudes in forms and formats that provide inspiration for designers (Gaver, Dunne and Pacenti, 1999).

Probes

3.5. PARTICIPATORY DESIGN METHODS

Origins in the Participatory Design tradition.

Generative sessions and PD methods help to:

•  Discover user needs and their mental models•  Identify the authentic issues and ensure that design solutions respond to

user needs•  Find design opportunities (based on requirements, behaviors, roles, mental

models and priorities)•  Develop empathy


Workshops


PD workshops organized by Legroup (projects: iTEC, 3D printing, Learning Layers).

Design games

Games can be used to guide (scaffold) the team work, communication, understanding of different points of view and create empathy.

Classics: -  Carpentology (Ehn)

-  Video card (Buur)

-  PICTIVE (Muller)

Images of The User Game (Brandt, 2006)


Narratives

Design narrative published by Jessica Mew in Design Practice

Methods.

The aim is to gather and discuss user narratives about their tasks and activities.

These narratives can be used to start the discussion, as analysis tool and for getting feedback.


•  Journey mapping

•  Love and breakup letter

•  Topical collage

•  Knowledge hunt

NARRATIVE

Types of PD activities (Frog Design)

•  Interface toolkit

•  Fill in the blanks

•  Ideal workflow

•  Ecosystem mapping

CREATE

•  Card sort

•  Channel surfing

•  Concept ranking

•  Value ranking

PRIORITIZE

•  Comic strips

•  Customizing scenarios

•  Simulating experiences

•  Intercept evaluation

CONTEXTUALFrog Design PD activities


•  Activity analysis

•  Affinity diagrams

•  Anthropometric analysis

•  Character profiles

•  Cognitive task analysis

•  Competitive product survey

•  Cross-cultural comparissons

•  Error analysis

•  Flow analysis

•  Historical analysis

•  Long-range forecasts

•  Secondary research

LEARN

•  A day in the life…

•  Behavioral archeology

•  Fly on the wall

•  Guided tours

•  Personal inventory

•  Rapid ethnography

•  Shadowing

•  Social network mapping

•  Still photo survey

•  Time lapse video

•  Behavioral mapping

Method cards (Ideo Design)

LOOK

IDEO method cards


•  Camera journal

•  Card sort

•  Cognitive maps

•  Collage

•  Conceptual landscape

•  Cultural probes

•  Draw the experience

•  Extreme user interviews

•  Five why’s?

•  Foreign correspondents

•  Narration

•  Surveys and questionnaires

•  Unfocus group

•  Word-concept association

ASK TRY

•  Behavior sampling

•  Be your customer

•  Body storming

•  Empathy tools

•  Experience prototype

•  Informance

•  Paper prototyping

•  Predict next years headlines

•  Quick and dirty prototyping

•  Role-playing

•  Scale modeling

•  Scenarios

•  Scenario testing

•  Try it yourself


Methods cards (Ideo Design)

IDEO method cards

MAKING

TELLING ENACTING

Framework for applying PD methods

Sanders, Brandt i Binder (2010)

Manual activities for representing ideas through physical artifacts

Future scenarios of use verbal description

Techniques to support and facilitate acting and playing


•  Stories and storyboarding

•  Diaries

•  Self observation

•  Documentaries and movie-making

•  Experience timelines or maps

•  Paper spaces

•  Cards

•  Voting dots

TALKING, TELLING & EXPLAINING

•  2D collages

•  2D mappings

•  3D mock-ups

•  Low-tech prototypes

•  3D space models

Framework for applying PD methods (Sanders, Brandt i Binder, 2010)

MAKING TANGIBLE THINGS

•  Game boards and game pieces and rules

•  Props and black boxes

•  3D space models

•  Scenario-making in the space of models or

through sandplay

•  Participatory enviosing and enacting by

setting users in future situations

•  Improvisation

•  Acting out, skits and play acting

•  Role playing

•  Body storming and informative

performance

ACTING, ENACTING & PLAYING


Workshop about student well-being. Runned by T. Tapola and E. Durall with Aalto students.

For telling

Methods:-  Design opportunities and challenges mapping-  Idea generation tackling one of the identified challenges


For making

PD workshops with teachers during iTEC project (A. Keune, T. Toikkanen)

Methods:-  Scenarios of use-  Design opportunities and challenges mapping-  Brainstorming


Workshops with Primary school students. Runned by A. Keune during the Square1 design research project.

Methods:-  Creation of 2D prototypes (interaction design).


For making

For enacting

Workshops with patients, hospital staff and architects for generating ideas about the futur

hospital environment through physical prototypes (1:1 scale). Project Design for Health (J. Kronqvist,)https://vimeo.com/53324982

Methods:-  Design probes-  Visual mapping-  Creation of 2D visual artifacts-  Role-playing


FURTHER READINGSBlomberg, J., Giacomi, J., Mosher, A., & Swenton-Wall, P. Ethnographic Field Methods and Their Relation to Design. In D. Dchuler and A. Namioka (Eds.) Participatory Design: Principles and Practices. Erlbaum: New Jersey, 1993. Blomberg, J., Giacomi, J., Mosher, A., & Swenton-Wall, P. Ethnographic Field Methods and Their Relation to Design. In D. Dchuler and A. Namioka (Eds.) Participatory Design: Principles and Practices. Erlbaum: New Jersey, 1993.

Beyer,H., & Holtzblatt, K.(1997).Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.��

Brandt, E. (2006, August). Designing exploratory design games: a framework for participation in participatory design?. In Proceedings of the ninth conference on Participatory design: Expanding boundaries in design-Volume 1 (pp. 57-66). ACM.

Brandt, E., Binder, T., & Sanders, E. B. N. (2012). Ways to engage telling, making and enacting. Routledge international handbook of participatory design. Routledge, New York, 145-181..

Cooper, A., Reimann, R., & Cronin, D. (2007).About Face 3:The Essentials of Interaction Design. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing, Inc.

Frog Design. Bringing Users into Your Process Through Participatory Designhttp://www.slideshare.net/frogdesign/bringing-users-into-your-process-through-participatory-design/64-STEP_3_FACILITATING_PARTICIPATORY_DESIGN

FURTHER READINGS

Gaver, B., Dunne, T., & Pacenti, E. (1999). Design: cultural probes.interactions, 6(1), 21-29.

IDEO. Method cards for IDEO. https://www.ideo.com/work/method-cards

Leinonen, T. (2010). Designing learning tools. Methodological insights (Doctoral dissertation, Aalto University School of Arts and Design, Helsinki).

Leinonen, T., Toikkanen, T., & Silfvast, K. (2008, October). Software as hypothesis: research-based design methodology. In Proceedings of the Tenth Anniversary Conference on Participatory Design 2008 (pp. 61-70). Indiana University.

Mattelmäki, T. (2005). Applying probes–from inspirational notes to collaborative insights. CoDesign, 1(2), 83-102.

Muller, M. J., & Kuhn, S. (1993). Participatory design. Communications of the ACM, 36(6), 24-28.

Nielsen group online articles:https://www.nngroup.com/articles/which-ux-research-methods/https://www.nngroup.com/articles/diary-studies/

FURTHER READINGS

Sanders, E. B. N., Brandt, E., & Binder, T. (2010, November). A framework for organizing the tools and techniques of participatory design. InProceedings of the 11th biennial participatory design conference (pp. 195-198). ACM.

Poldoja, H. (2013). Contextual inquiry. http://www.slideshare.net/hanspoldoja/contextual-inquiry-16189942?qid=15fadf70-5805-4bf8-be58-60e1ba8be7cf&v=&b=&from_search=1 Visser, F. S., Stappers, P. J., Van der Lugt, R., & Sanders, E. B. (2005). Contextmapping: experiences from practice. CoDesign, 1(2), 119-149.

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