On Contextual Inquiry

One of the most enduring sections of the book is Holtzblatt and Beyer’s principles for interviewing users to understand their work and provide useful input into the design process. They call this method Contextual Inquiry.

We designed our field interviewing method, Contextual Inquiry, to address these issues: how to get data about the structure of work practice, rather than a market characterization; how to make unarticulated knowledge about work explicit, so designers who do not do the work can understand it; and how to get at the low-level details of work that have become habitual and invisible. (p.37)

Contextual Design grew out of the authors’ experiences developing software products for the workplace, and so they use the word “work” throughout the book. But the word can refer to any complex human activity, whether in a workplace or not.

The authors suggest a “master/apprentice” model for Contextual Inquiry sessions with users. That is, the design team comes with the mindset of “apprentices,” ready to learn from the practice of the user as “master.” This relationship model emphasizes an attentiveness and respect for user practices, while allowing for a degree of nosiness and openness necessary for the design team to learn from the encounter. Users don’t have to be experts in design or teaching others about their work, they only need to be willing to perform their work and talk about it.

Four key principles of Contextual Inquiry are identified: context, partnership, interpretation, and focus.

Context

The principle of context says that designers should conduct their interview in the real context of the work. By observing user work practices in real contexts, designers are able to gather “ongoing experience rather than summary experience, and concrete data rather than abstract data.” (p.47)

Partnership

The principle of partnership relates back to the idea of maintaining a “master/apprentice” relationship model, and essentially stresses the quality of mutual trust and collaboration between designer and user that should be cultivated by the structure of the Contextual Inquiry session.

Interpretation

The principle of interpretation encourages designers to share interpretations of what is happening with the user during the session itself. The designer should do this in an effort to validate the interpretation or prompt a correction from the user. This may feel counter-intuitive if we think our job is to remain “objective” in these encounters, but the authors argue that “we fail in the entire purpose of working with customers if we do not share and validate our interpretations of their work—the most important data we bring back would not be validated.” (p.58)

Focus

The principle of focus reminds the design team that should enter the session with a clear, shared project focus in order to know where to guide the conversation as it happens. “This project focus gives the team a shared starting point, which is augmented by each person’s entering focus so they each bring their unique perspective to bear.” (p.62)