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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
