Can I see an example?

Unfortunately, there are no complete examples out there, and I haven't had the opportunity to generate one that I can share. However, there are a number of partial reports.

As mentioned above, Contextual inquiry generates a lot of data. It is not uncommon for there to be more than one thousand atomic observations and for the analyses of the data to cover several conference room walls.In addition, there are privacy, confidentiality, competative advantage, and competative intelligence reasons for not publishing the entire data and analysis from a Contextual inquiry.

There are three chapters in Field Methods Casebook for Software Design that are case studies in the use of Contextual techniques. In chapter eleven, User Centered Design in a Commercial Software Company, Stanley Page describes WordPerfect's experience in deploying Contextual techniques. Apparently there was enthusiastic management support, as this intial team got three weeks of training from Incontext Enterprises. Other than this, the most notable feature of the chapter is the discussion for the organizational issues dealing with the success of the Contextual techniques and integrating the information generated into new products. In terms of actually using Contextual techniques, there is some brief, high level description of what was done, but not how it was done.

In chapter twelve, Using Field-Oriented Design Techniques to Develop Consumer Software Products, Diane Juhl presents an interesting application of Contextual techniques to the study of home life. Again, a high level description of the process is given, with an emphasis on the planning stage. The chapter piqued my interest, but left me wanting more substantive details.

Chaper thirteen, Using Contextual Inquiry to Discover Physicians' True Needs, provides the most detailed account of the nitty-gritty application of Contextual techniques. The situation that Coble, Maffit, Orland, and Kahn describe is somewhat different from the stereotypical situation for Contextual inquiry in that it is an in-house development project, and the Contextual techniques were used for the express purpose of generating requirements. The chapter begins with some background material and a description of how the physicians who participated in the study were selected. The hilights of the chapter are the descriptions of the interview process and the analysis that followed. Their interview proces consisted of a ten to fifteen minute introduction to the study and Contextual techniques. In one case where the orientation was omitted, the interview caused some friction until the Contextual inquiry method was explained. The interviews lasted from one to six hours and had to take into account the sensitive nature of observing a physician at work. The post-interview wrap-up was short due to the demands on the participants time. The rest of the section touches on some of the good and bad things that happened during the interviews. The section on analysis and interpretation briefly describes the mechanics of how the vaious models were created and shows and example of each. The rest of the chapter describes how the understanding generated through the use of Contextual techniques was used to formulate the requirements and provides a retrospective analysis of their experience.


Donald Cox, coxd@cpsc.ucalgary.ca
Last Modified: 28 February, 1997