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L545 Systems Analysis & Design

Week 3: September 16, 2008

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Announcement

Problem Definitions will be posted on Oncourse (Forum) for potential group projects

Add your profile in Oncourse

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The Core Premise of Contextual Inquiry

Go where the user works, observe the user as he or she works, and talk to the user about the work

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4 Principles of Contextual Inquiry

Context Partnership Interpretation Focus

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4 Principles of Contextual Inquiry: Context

Go to the customer’s workplace and see the work as it unfolds Summary vs. ongoing experience (see

HWW, p. 96—dos & don’ts) Abstract vs. concrete data (ask for specific

instances; use the real artifacts) Observe the work practice

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4 Principles of Contextual Inquiry: Partnership

Collaborate with the user on understanding his work

Users are experts; we (analysts) provide tools to analyze the work situation

Get feedback on design ideas Goals: articulating work structure &

revising design ideas

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4 Principles of Contextual Inquiry: Interpretation

We need to verify our interpretations with users

Fact Hypothesis Design

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Example of Possible Interpretations

What’s your interpretation for the following observation?

A user of an accounting package kept a list of account names and account #s next to her screen

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4 Principles of Contextual Inquiry: Focus

What aspects of work matter and what don’t Project focus gives the team a shared

starting point How to expand focus

Surprises and contradictions Nods What you don’t know

Admit your ignorance You are there to learn (the master/apprenticeship

model)

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Pitfall for Design

“The success rate is only 20% when technical engineers design what they think other people want” says the Intel’s chairman, Andrew S. Grove (Takahashi, 1998)

Takahashi, D. (1998). Doing fieldwork in the high-tech jungle. Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, October 28.

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Success for Design

What can we learn from Toyota’s design strategies described in Gertner (2007)?

Cf., using ethnography in contextual design (Simonsen & Kensing, 1997).

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Design Ethnographer

A social scientist who works for a technology company and studies user environments to suggest product improvements. [source]

Design ethnographer at IBM & Intel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuN7

Mc0S1TU

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Contextual Interview Structure: 4 steps

Conventional interview (introduction) Introduce yourself, get to know each other as

people Get opinions about the tools, and an overview

of the job and the work (summary data)

Transition (set the rules)

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Contextual Interview Structure: 4 steps

Contextual interview proper The customer do her work task You (the apprentice) observe, ask Qs, suggest

interpretations of behaviors Be nosy Follow the user around Remember: context, partnership, interpretation, & focus

Wrap-up Summarize what you learned User’s last chance to correct and elaborate on your

understanding

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Interviews

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Example of an Interview

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4OvQIGDg4I&feature=related

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Designing the Interviewing Situation

Normal task … is easy What about others?

Intermittent task Uninterruptible task Extremely long task (e.g., years) Extremely focused task Internal mental task

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Who to Interview—how many?

1-2 people in each role you identified as important to the focus

Collect data from 5-15 people in all

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Who to Interview? (HWW, p. 68-69)

Diversity is an important aspect: look for cultural differences different physical situations (e.g., single-

location vs. distributed locations) differences of scale (a small business vs.

a large corporation)

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Group Activity

Role play for Builders, PMgers, Architects, & User Reps

Do not share the write-ups Meet together for the assigned role Then, form a design team Debrief

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Group Activity

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Group ActivityPM Architect Builder User

Reps

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