Contextual Design

Who are the authors?

Karen Holtzblatt is a design research consultant with a background in psychology. She is well-known in the human-computer interaction field as co-creator of the Contextual Design process. She is CEO of InContext, a consultancy focused on applying Contextual Design toward client needs, and worked at DEC (now part of HP) before that.

Hugh Beyer is a technology consultant and co-creator of the Contextual Design process. He has previously been CTO at InContext, a consultancy formed around Contextual Design, and now works at 3D Data Ltd.

What's the intention?

The book is an outline of Contextual Design, a rigorous design process created by the authors and developed out of their work at Digital Equipment Corporation (now part of HP). The process is firmly user-centered and the book goes into detail on methods to capture information about users, analyse that data, and apply it to product design.

Who's it for?

Since it’s based off of their professional experiences, the authors have intended the book for practitioners designing software and computer products. However, it’s a relatively hefty textbook and, in my experience, has more visibility within academic circles and the human-computer interaction (HCI) community in particular.

So what?

The book is a classic in the field of HCI for asserting a well-structured process for user-centered design. It’s worth reading just to have the reference point for design research. However, in an approach that seems common in HCI, the process as read is often a little too structured for my taste. Nonetheless, there are a number of useful principles to pull out of the text when thinking about design research and talking to users.

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