[IxDA Discuss] Can Contextual Design be used to define a business process

[Mark Schraad]

HI Mark,

Contextual inquiry is a very powerful tool for getting to the heart  
of customer usage as well as for taking the temp of the market. I  
have used it with field workers, customer service personnel as well  
as with sales staff. There is a tremendous amount of tacit knowledge  
in those areas of a company that marketing departments rarely know  
how to extract, and I personally do not believe that focus groups are  
the way to go. While not as effective in some cases as a mini  
ethnographic study, or a full blown ethnography, it can be very cost  
effective.    If you use contextual inquiry working with the staff  
that interacts directly with customers you will get a mix of market  
knowledge and user information. I would consider doing some work  
directly with user as well. This may seem obvious, but the primary  
principle to remember is that customers and staff can't tell you what  
they don't understand. Much of this process is about the listening  
skills of those doing the interviewing. Getting the subject to tell  
stories rather than answer the questions will help give depth to the  
information you gather.

I believe that most product directives are best determined when you  
are able to objectively triangulate user needs, technical  
capabilities, and market analysis. Within the market (not marketing -  
think Porter's five factors or SWAT) analysis make sure that business  
objectives are a part of the conclusion.

Mark


On Nov 23, 2007, at 2:03 PM, Pawson, Mark wrote:

> Well its November and time to reorg the corporation again:)
> We are looking at ways to integrate UCD with Business Development.  
> Specifically we are looking at using methods such as K.  
> Holtzblatt's Rapid Contextual Design to develop a  new process,  
> rather than a product, that creates a positive user experience for  
> customers transitioning from a legacy application to a new  
> generation product. We are thinking of doing contextual inquiry to  
> understand the decision process customers go through so we can  
> identify what makes them decide to transistion, what are the pain  
> points etc. I can almost envision this being an exciting project  
> but then I hit a lot of grey area. Has anyone ever applied these  
> techniques in such a fashion? Is this UCD or a Business Analyst  
> role? Any articles or reference books on this? Any advice greatly  
> appreciated.
>
> Mark Pawson
>