Again, this mostly applies to context-heavy apps. As a general rule, you can expect a contextual enquiry to take 3 weeks of elapsed time: one week planning and preparing. At this point the manufacturer validates the design through summative usability testing. As a research method, a contextual inquiry (CI) has a few principles that serve as a basis for this approach. Contextual inquiry - Contextual inquiry is a form of qualitative research in which UX practitioners observe how users interact with a product in their natural environment, such as their workplace. For the sake of this article, well define contextual inquiry as a user research endeavor that takes place within the context of product usage. What users do and what they say they do can be completely different! So, be respectful and be natural. and create products that they will love. This may be fine in their worldview, and again, they are your sponsor so that is their call, but that does not mean you have to continue to carry out the research plan as you designed it. There are many ways to learn what users think and believe. Contextual inquiry is a method of practicing being present with users. Id like to hear how you get on. This system should manage 100 customer inquiries a day." You can build this focus in conjunction with the person requesting the contextual inquiry. In this example, designers may add content about what information users may need to have on hand before beginning the form. 1. Finally, sometimes digital products just arent that dependent on the context of their usage. 2. Contextual Inquiry A Contextual Inquiry is a user interview & observation session conducted wherever a prospective customer will use your product (for example, in their home or office). For example, when asking the participant to look up a customers details you might see that they use work arounds. There are user interviews, surveys, usability testings, etc. This example shows the most thinking about design implications and their proposed solution Workflow A business analyst is gathering requirements for an improved business process. In our collection of UX-research methodologies, contextual inquiry is essential. Contextual inquiry can be challenging to conduct, so here are three key areas that can often go wrong if not considered properly in advance. Context always matters. If you like my sketches, you can buy me a coffee to support my work! Partnership. So you go with a couple of music fans to the next outdoor event. UX case studyKwik Rewards address change, How To Enable Reader Mode In Chrome For Mac, Whats Your Lingo? Preparation time is limited. The UX Book: Process and Guidelines for Ensuring a Quality User Experience 1st Edition. Analyse the data. Research is the time to find out what you dont know and learn from it so whilst you might have a task list youd like to observe and learn, you might see something different or new along the way. Despite the importance of context, the behavior of a person being observed vs their actual behavior will not be identical; Much harder to organize and conduct remotely than a regular usability testing or an interview; Works best for context-heavy apps, and is likely to be an overkill for apps that arent heavily reliant on context; This article kind of had an unintentional running theme, which is that contextual inquiries are a pain to set up. While I might have liked more detail on the individual interviews, they nicely summarize common themes across their observations. An example would be spending time on testing sign up and sign-in flows. Coffee is my fuel you can buy me one if you want to boost the sketch-creation process! I always find it easier to start your planning with why youre doing this and what you aim to find out from your participants. Clap please show if you like this sketch, so others can find it more easily!Respond please let me know in the response section if you have any suggestions or questions! What is a contextual inquiry UX? The Usability Professionals' Association's Usability Body of Knowledge, [1] defines a contextual inquiry as follows: "A semi-structured interview method to obtain information about the context of use, where users are first asked a set of standard questions and then observed and questioned while they work in their own environments." Contextual Inquiry is Day 20 of 100 Days of UX, an exploratory effort to survey the 100 methods of design outlined in Martin and Hannington's Universal Methods of Design. Get over it. One participant at a time. So clue them in, and empower them to make the process great. Contextual Inquiry 8 typical patterns and issues 8 common patterns, behaviours and issues seen during a contextual inquiry, with a focus on for enterprise software services and culture. Contextual inquiry is a powerful tool in your toolkit, but as with all methodologies, it has its pros and its cons. You can subscribe to my Sketching for UX newsletter to get these UX Knowledge Base Sketches directly to your inbox weekly, and to participate in a 100-day long UX-visual library building challenge. In Contextual Inquiry studies, we often encounter unexpected behaviors, which can provide ideas for features we haven't thought of. If they arent at ease with you, it will make them think hard about their actions and this will have an impact on the insights you will get. You need to keep in mind that as the researcher, you are ultimately the leader and need to inspire the participant for the process to be the most effective. Contextual inquiry at its core about observing engaged users in their natural context to see first hand what a user may not be able to report accurately. Focus. Shortlist hypotheses and document your goals, or else you'll end up with just a bunch of inconclusive pieces of information. Here are few things to I do to build rapport: I like to take photos so I can bring the participants context and story to life. Many times, contextual inquiry requires traveling to the end user's location, which potentially involves airplane travel, hotel, and food expenses. A user interview is something a designer or UX researcher does before they create the product. Context-heavy apps should definitely involve contextual studies so that you can build something that is used, useful and useable. Also be prepared to take screenshots of anything of note uncovered during a contextual inquiry. Ethnographic UX research reveals user insights by allowing you to observe users in the context of their real-life technical and social environments. Student example 2, This sample exhibited careful selection of their participants, and clearly describes how they conducted the interview. A contextual inquiry method of observation would allow designers and researchers to see exactly how users were completing tasks. Principles for Conducting a Contextual Inquiry. 2. Giving this the proper consideration can not be overstated. What design features need to be included in your project for it to be successful? Formative usability assessment begins during the prototyping stage and ends when the product design is mostly complete. Even a simple Google Doc file that combines different artifacts from contextual inquiry can help put all of your data together. Time and costs aside, taking into account the quarantine restrictions, its harder to provide safe conditions for close user observation. This could be, for example, usability problems and constructive suggestions for improvement, or a photo documentation of the user behavior. We love it, but it is not always the right fit. The four . Digital platforms tend to be lacking in contextual information and interaction, with most interactions occurring independently of the environment. Their detailed description of . Contextual inquiry is a type of ethnographic field study that involves in-depth observation and interviews of a small sample of users to gain a robust understanding of work practices and behaviors. Contextual Inquiry Examples 1. Empathy is not only a positive trait for seeking an understanding of others for research purposes, but it is also helpful to remember when introducing research participants into an unfamiliar process. If you subscribe, you can also download the Sketching for UX designers WORKBOOK for free! Much like our clients, the research participants will frequently lack an understanding of our methods and objectives. The development team can also help you define . 3. Ideally, if there's a chance to interview the website's design/development team prior to the site visit, you definitely should do that. usability testing session and an on-site contextual observation session. Usability: Contextual inquiry. The data you gather will be more complete and comprehensive, than research outside of the normal context; You can gather details that the participants wouldnt have otherwise thought of sharing. CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY Contextual Inquiry is a user-centered design research method. It shouldnt come as a surprise that contextual inquiries work best for apps that heavily rely on the context. We all need to adapt our vision at times to the circumstances, but that does not mean you need to compromise the research, and more importantly, never compromise the participants. Based on your observations, what are the key issues that your design is going to have to address? Click on the desktop icon. Contextual inquiry is appropriate for health-care settings because user needs and activities in health care heavily vary even though they provide similar service (Ozkaynak et al., 2018 ). The first one concerns observing behaviors that have very little room for variation. If your client refuses to let you speak with the custodian and instead tells you to talk to their boss, or they want you to solve a software problem in a board room and not in front of a users computer, thats fine, but then you cant do contextual interviews. If you are interested in sketching, check out my Sketching for UX designers course. Other times it can be a little nebulous, especially if it is an office environment. As a result, you'll be able to answer questions such as: Any issues that users are facing Equipment they are working with How their space is set-up Preference between mouse and keyboard` This study reports the implementation of an inquiry-based science project in a preschool setting, in the context of a preservice teacher's school placement. The steps involved might look something like this. Examples of contextual inquiry include assembling an IKEA high chair at home, shopping for a specific diet at a supermarket, or using new conference software in the workplace. THE METHOD. Split up your inquiry team: one or two of you to each from the customer company. To accomplish this, we try to provide as much information about the process, what the participant should expect, and what we are trying to achieve. You will be surprised with what you find! An example would be spending time on testing "sign up" and "sign-in" flows. Theres an additional major benefit of observing users in their context. Plus, it means I dont have to stop every time to ask for a photo! I appreciate that we as UX practitioners may not always align well with that kind of rationale, but this is design, and we are designing for others, not ourselves. It involves talking to the user (or someone who represents a group of users) about what they need from the product and how they anticipate using . A contextual inquiry means going to where your users are to see their real-time, behind-the scenes, first-hand experience. 3. One method for overcoming this problem is contextual inquiry, more commonly known as contextual interviews. The following are illustrative examples. Contextual Inquiry is an immersive, contextual method of observing and interviewing that reveals underlying (and invisible) work structure. 5. She visits users to watch them perform their parts of the process. When Would You Use a Contextual Inquiry? UX METHODS Contextual Inquiry, 1:1 Interviews, Comparative Analysis, User Interviews, Surveys, Personas, Task Analysis, Affinity Map, Card Sort, Task Flow, User Flow, Information Architecture . The same applies to you. I find that oftentimes such stakeholders have overlap with . For example, Moen, a product line of faucets and fixtures, wanted to make. In terms of the design process, there are a few stages where such an inquiry might come in handy. These are critical questions that will ultimately direct your findings. The project aimed to promote the development of basic and integrated scientific skills, enhance acquisition of conceptual knowledge and make the students enjoy while learning science. So reiterate why you selected contextual inquiry as a method, let them know the downside of not doing it, and update the research plan with some other method. Step 1: Determine who you want feedback from Your target participants may change depending on your business goals. Then you can plan your task list around it easily. Any qualitative technique such as Contextual Inquiry produces huge amounts of detailed knowledge about the user. It can be understood as: - an ethnographic interviewing technique (Beyer, & Holtzblatt, 1997) - from a wider perspective, as the rst phase of the research-based design process (Leinonen,Toikkanen, & Silvfast, 2008). For example, a telephone may be an artifact if the user must place a call in order to complete a task. We combine psychology & design thinking to create digital services with social impact. 4. The Impact. Learn it in 6 simple quick and easy steps. As researchers, we need to minimize misreporting. I try to do it at the beginning of the observation, then we can relax after that. As humans, we all do this so it is not worth obsessing about it, but as researchers, we need to take steps to minimize misreporting. I founded Melon Experience Design to help clients gain better research insights from their users and make a social impact, get in touch if you would like to work with us. This point is not debatable, so hold your ground and respectively push back if your client pushes back at you. Think of your potential users and their operating environment. Let's go through each of these principles. Just think of the difference between the logistic of a remote 30 min. A software bug is an error, flaw or fault in the design, development, or operation of computer software that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways. During a . User bias is a whole subject within itself. A contextual inquiry is based on the interaction between the UX researcher and the participant. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Spotify. Good luck! The UX Knowledge Base Sketch collection is for UX designers and anyone interested in UX design, UI design (and some related fields) or in sketching. And thats definitely true, especially when contrasted by remote user research methods. To help keep it on the rails, try to be mindful of the following five tips. Anytime something tweaks your antenna, drill down with follow up questions. No compromises. That's not to say that these principles are unique to CI but they certainly are greatly emphasized. Highlight the ingredients on the web page. This sample interviewed different roles involved in the activity and also included a photo from data collection. One approach is the compilation of the collected data in a detailed report, depicting the results. Testing a Product Contextual inquiries can be used for understanding use cases for an existing product or new product idea. 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