{"id":225,"date":"2015-01-30T18:11:53","date_gmt":"2015-01-30T23:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/?p=225"},"modified":"2015-01-30T18:11:53","modified_gmt":"2015-01-30T23:11:53","slug":"contextual-inquiry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/contextual-inquiry\/","title":{"rendered":"Contextual Inquiry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Word: \u00a0<\/strong>Contextual Inquiry<\/p>\n<p><strong>Definition:\u00a0<\/strong>A research approach in which the researcher physically goes on-site to meet with participants. Once on-site, the researcher can\u00a0interview and\/or observe users in their normal\u00a0working environments.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Thoughts:\u00a0<\/strong>Contextual inquiry, like everything in life, has its benefits and pitfalls. Let's start with the good! Observing a user in their \"natural habitat\" will provide much richer and\u00a0detailed information that may be extremely hard or even impossible to learn over the phone or in a constructed setting. Think about designing\u00a0hospital enterprise software, for example. If you can watch how staff work together\u00a0and you can observe their workflow first hand, this will be far more beneficial than having someone dictate process to you over the phone.<\/p>\n<p>In a perfect world, most of us would prefer this method above all else. However, such research techniques are first and foremost time-consuming and expensive. As we all know, research tends to be one of the first areas to get cut from budget, so many times this is just not an option. Additionally, there are security, intellectual\u00a0property, and intrusiveness concerns on top of everything else.<\/p>\n<p>We could all use an opportunity to get off our tails and when\u00a0such an approach makes sense, jump at the chance. Keep contextual inquiry in your research arsenal!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Questions:\u00a0<\/strong>Have you ever been in a situation when a contextual inquiry did not go as planned? How about a time you learned something during a contextual inquiry that might never have come up otherwise?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Word: \u00a0Contextual Inquiry Definition:\u00a0A research approach in which the researcher physically goes on-site to meet with participants. Once on-site, the researcher can\u00a0interview and\/or observe users in their normal\u00a0working environments. Thoughts:\u00a0Contextual inquiry, like everything in life, has its benefits and pitfalls. Let&#8217;s start with the good! Observing a user in their &#8220;natural habitat&#8221; will provide much [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,26],"tags":[68,69,29,8,9],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-product-management","category-research","tag-contextual-inquiry","tag-contextual-research","tag-research","tag-user-experience","tag-ux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":228,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions\/228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}