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Contextual InquiryInf-5220 H2003

Hans Gallis, Ph.D. student

Everyone is talking about technology, when what’simportant is what people do with technology.

− Martin CooperInventor of the cellphone (appeared in 1973, Motorola)

Jarle Kasbo, Consultant, Ahus

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What is Contextual Inquiry (CI)?

• Based on etnography and sociological research traditions• Grounding the design in user’s work• Researcher/Observer goes into the research object’s own

environment• Stays in the background, but also inquires about events• Period: A few hours days• Goal: To understand motivations and strategies behind

the users’ actions:• Old principle: ”Know the user”• Understanding who users really are and how they work

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Context awareness!

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CI in Practice• Notes, observing, pictures/video• Asking questions (when proper)• Following research object closely• Collect sample artifacts• Make partnership with user• Do not try to interpret actions to

confirm your assumptions• Some questions to answer (focus):

What are the users doing? Why?What kind of tools are used?

When?Who/what do they interact with?

When and how?

Design: Where do the objects comefrom?

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Our approach –explorative/experimental

• KNOWMOBILE – Knowledge access in distributed training.Mobile opportunities for medical students.

• IT-area: Mobile Informatics• Medical students in their clinical practice:

• Mobile – walk around the hospital, travel by train• Interacting with a lot of different equipment • Store equipment in their coat’s pockets

• What are the conditions for the possibility for using a mobile service (PDA as e-book and notepad) in theirday-to-day practice?

• Developed an e-book prototype of a paperbased handbook

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The idea behind the prototype

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Our approach – method

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Prototypeversion 1

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Prototypeversion 2

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The contexts where wecarried through CI

• Local practitioners office• Hospital• Travelling (by train)

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Some practical issues – in advance

• A lot of organizing• Get the right tools (cameras, disguise ☺ etc.)• (Get the right persons)• Laws and rules• Professional secrecy contract, confidenciallity issues• Inform involved persons/authorities

(data collection procedure)• And then we were ready to go………..

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Jarle and Hans – Doctors for a day

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Our experiences from CI

• The interviews in advance gave us many wrong views• Therefore: should instead have done CI from the beginning

• Would then developed a different prototype/service• A powerful tool to get insight into aspects such as:

• Organisational aspects (e.g. community of practice)• Work processes and flows (e.g. task chains)• IT-issues (e.g. usability)

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Our experiences from CI

• Exhaustive and demanding work• A picture can say more than thousand words, but• It could be difficult to explain CI helps you

• More important:• It’s fun and a very creative process

• We missed a tool for analyzing qualitative results• Now we have found it: QSR N6 and Mind Manager

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Our experiences from CI

• Works perfect for testing prototypes• especially because we could guide the users

• Great technique for learning about work practicesin ’unknown’ domains

• Document your observations asap• write a report and emphasize important findings• get the user to review your report

• Can easily be combined with quantitative methods?• Learned a lot! We will soon become doctors ☺

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Conclusion from our prototype