Contextual Design: Evolved (Synthesis Lectures on Human-Centered Informatics)

Contextual Design is a user-centered design process that uses 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 adds techniques to analyze and present user data, drive ideation from data, design specific product solutions, and iterate those solutions with customers. In 2013, we overhauled the method to account for the way that technology has radically changed people's lives since the invention of the touchscreen phones and other always-on, always-connected, and always-carried devices. This book describes the new Contextual Design, evolved to help teams design for the way technology now fits into peoples' lives. We briefly describe the steps of the latest version of Contextual Design and show how they create a continual immersion in the world of the user for the purpose of innovative product design. Introduction 16 Design for Life 20 Field Research: Data Collection and Interpretation 26 3.1 Contextual Inquiry 26 3.1.1 Running an Interview 28 3.2 Interpretation Sessions 33 Consolidation and Ideation: The Bridge to Design 36 4.1 Data Consolidation 38 4.1.1 The Affinity Diagram 39 4.2 Contextual Design Models 43 4.3 Ideation 56 4.3.1 The Visioning Workshop 57 4.3.2 The Cool Drilldown 64 Detailed Design and Validation 68 5.1 Interaction Design Patterns 73 5.2 Storyboarding 76 5.3 The User Environment Design 79 5.4 Testing and Iteration 82 CONCLUSION 88 References 90 Author Biographies 92 Contextual Design is a user-centred design process that uses in-depth field research to drive innovative design. In 2013, the method was overhauled to account for the way that technology has radically changed people's lives since the invention of the touchscreen. This book describes the new Contextual Design, evolved to help teams design for the way technology now fits into peoples' lives.