Contextual Design

Design for Life

Karen Holtzblatt, Hugh Beyer

• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780128011362
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Informatique
• Subtopic: Interaction homme-machine

Contextual Design: Design for Life, Second Edition, describes the core techniques needed to deliberately produce a compelling user experience. Contextual design was first invented in 1988 to drive a deep understanding of the user into the design process. It has been used in a wide variety of industries and taught in universities all over the world. Until now, the basic CD approach has needed little revision, but with the wide adoption of handheld devices, especially smartphones, the way technology is integrated into people's lives has fundamentally changed. Contextual Design V2.0 introduces both the classic CD techniques and the new techniques needed to "design for life", fulfilling core human motives while supporting activities.

This completely updated and revised edition is written in a clear, informal style without excessive jargon, and is the must-have book for any UX Design library. Users will find coverage of mobile devices and consumer and business products, all illustrated with new examples, case studies, and discussions on how to use CD with the agile development and other project requirements methods.

• Provides tactics on how to gather detailed data on how people live, work, and use products
• Helps develop a coherent picture of a whole user population
• Presents tactics on how to use the seven "Cool Concepts" to support core human motives and generate new product concepts guided by user data, ideation techniques, and principles key to producing a compelling user experience
• Explains how to structure the system and user interface to best support the user across place, time, and platform

Part 1

Gathering User Data

Outline

1. Introduction

2. User Data Drives Design

3. Principles of Contextual Inquiry

4. The Interpretation Session

1

Introduction

Abstract

User-centered design is a tried and true approach to product design. Start with an understanding of the user gathered via rich field interviews and build that understanding into your new product—then test and iterate the result with the user again. The first edition of this book introduced Contextual Design, a complete method to do just that. But over the last 10 years, there's been a revolution in technology with smartphones and tablets providing constant, continuous connection with people, information sources, media, and the support structures of our lives wherever we happen to be. Our inquiry into the impact of these devices led to the development of the Cool Concepts, an articulation of what makes these devices loved. This new integration of technology into life requires new ways to understand and design, and therefore a revision of the Contextual Design method. This chapter motivates that redesign and discusses the principles driving the method: design for life, design in teams, and immersion in the life of the user.

Keywords

Business analysis; Contextual design; Contextual inquiry; Cool concepts; Design; Design for life; Design thinking; HCI; Human-machine interaction; Marketing; Mobile design; Product design; Requirements gathering; System design; Usability; User-centered design; User experience; User research; UX

Contextual Design is a user-centered design process built upon in-depth field research to drive innovative design. Contextual Design was first invented in 1988 and has since been used in a wide variety of industries and taught in universities all over the world. It is a complete front-end design process rooted in Contextual Inquiry, the widespread, industry-standard field data gathering technique. Contextual Design includes techniques to analyze and present user data, drive ideation from data, design specific product solutions, and iterate those solutions with users. In 2013, we redesigned the method to account for the way that technology has radically changed people’s lives with the invention of the touch-screen phones and other always-on, always-connected, and always-carried devices. This book describes the current practices in Contextual Design, which has evolved to help teams design for the way technology now fits into peoples’ lives. Twenty years ago we wrote:

“Developing software has never been easy. But over the last 20 years the requirements on software development have gotten vastly more stringent. Whereas once computers were used by experts in glass rooms, now everyone on the street expects to use a computer to get their jobs done. Whereas once computer users knew and liked technology, now users want their computers to be as invisible as a ball–point pen so they can focus on their jobs. Whereas once applications supported a single, bounded task—compute compound interest for a bank’s loans, perhaps—now they are expected to support the whole work of the business, from electronic funds transfers with the Federal Reserve to the company’s Email system. It’s no longer enough to be a good software engineer. To be successful in today’s world, those who define and build hardware and software systems must know how to fit them into the fabric of everyday life.”

Real mobile computing radically altered how technology fits into life—so Contextual Design evolved

This is still true. But 20 years ago computers were not really mobile. Laptops were clunky and had limited use. Software applications required a person to sit at a desk, locked to a keyboard and screen, and a proprietary data source. There was no Internet back then, no possibility of streaming megabytes of data and video to a handheld device. There were no consumer applications to speak of. Supercomputers of that era couldn’t match the cell phone of today. There was no online shopping, no social media, YouTube or streaming video at all, no search engine that could find anything instantly in a single request. We read paper books and newspapers. Games were locked in a box. So was business data. In other words, there was no possibility of real, on-the-go access—the technology didn’t exist and the content was not available. Even the BlackBerry was a few years in the future. We had no access to all of our life’s information, no support for work and life activities and no access to entertainment.

Terms: product versus system

We use the word “product” to refer to any technical system of support your team ships. This may be a new or enhancement of a commercial consumer or business product, a website, a mobile app, or suite of all these delivered on any platform. Or it may be an IT system, an enhancement or redesign of a function cluster within a larger system or a set of customized third-party products. So whatever your team is making, for the purpose of simplicity we will call a “product.” When we are specifically talking to commercial versus IT professionals we will call it out.

So what did it mean to “fit systems into the fabric of everyday life,” in that limited context? The history of user-centered design was a reaction to at least two things.

First, traditional product design was dominated by smart software engineers thinking up a bright idea, building it, and then trying to create a market for it. But even at that time our industry had moved away from green screens toward products that supported applications for regular people. Technology had become more sophisticated; user interfaces and interactions had gone beyond command lines. It had become critical to consider ordinary users—not specialists. Early usability professionals realized that fixing a product’s problems by making better documentation made no sense. We knew we had to work with users. But usability testing, the hot new thing at the time, was and is not a way to invent a better product. Usability testing can fix 10–12% of the problems with an existing product or concept. It cannot reveal what will really enhance and transform people’s lives.

Second, user-centered design¹ was driven by the need to create a space for design as an activity. A product or business system was defined as a set of requirements, a list of features that were parceled out to developers who did all the design. There was no concept at the time of design as a separate activity or of professionals who designed. A product was a list; requirement gathering was about what to put on the list. “Design,” in software development, invariably and always meant design of the structure of the code. Even today, “design” usually means design of the look of the user interface only.

Design is its own activity and needs focused attention

As the industry moved to tools supporting everyday people, those of us leading the charge toward user-centered design recognized a need for a more systemic approach to product design. We realized that the way an engineer thinks about the world, the product, and the activity being supported is simply not the way ordinary people think and work.

Witness an early word processor: Paragraphs, footnotes, headers and the like were implemented as “elements.” A document was a collection of elements in a database. Behavior was coded as attributes on the elements. And so a footnote could float around the page, just by changing a few attributes! Not what any writer would expect.

For us, design has always meant figuring out what to make that will enhance life. Today the overarching concept of User Experience (UX) refers to a collection of activities—research, interaction design, and visual design—all of which work together to build the right thing for people. Product definition and specification are at the core of design.

Contextual Design helps teams figure out what to make to enhance life

Twenty years ago, the message of Contextual Design was: first understand your users, then design a coherent product that works for the task you want to support. Don’t generate a list of features to achieve a preconceived purpose structured in a way that made sense to engineers. Fit to life meant design for a coherent task.

Contextual Design has been used to design business products and systems, websites, mobile devices, mobile apps, medical devices, consumer products and electronics, automotive electronics, business information products, CRM, manufacturing systems, and more. But none of these products radically altered the way people used technology in daily life. All these products could still be supported well with a task-focused design process. The activities they supported were all achieved sitting at a desk in front of a computer. Even as we moved to WYSIWYG, to the web, to online retail and social media, we were still sitting in front of a computer, doing a task, in a space which supported that task.

Then in 2007 and 2008, the iPhone and the Android put small computers into everyone’s hands, and the role of technology in life radically changed. They supercharged a transformation that was already in progress: Google taught us that any question can be answered, in seconds, anywhere, without arcane query languages. Facebook and Twitter taught us that we can reach out and touch others any time we wish. Then iPhone, Android, and tablets gave us these and our whole world—our friends, shops, books, news, and pictures, the things we’ve created and the things we need for work—in our palms, on our wrists, always just a touch away. There’s no boot time anymore—hardly any setup, login, or preparation. There’s just me and my work, me and my life—and increasingly, not much distinction between them.

And, of course, how technology interacts with the people has radically changed. Technology is now an appendage—always available in every moment of time, anywhere. Now people get their whole life done by filling up every bit of time they have, anytime, anywhere, across multiple platforms. No longer can successful product teams focus only on individual tasks done in one stationary location. Now teams must design for life: how a product fits into all the contexts of ev...