Contextual Design

by Holtzblatt; Beyer

• ISBN13: 9781558604117
• ISBN10: 1558604111
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-09-01
• Publisher: Elsevier Science

Summary

This book introduces a customer-centered approach to business by showing how data gathered from people while they work can drive the definition of a product or process while supporting the needs of teams and their organizations. This is a practical, hands-on guide for anyone trying to design systems that reflect the way customers want to do their work. The authors developed Contextual Design, the method discussed here, through their work with teams struggling to design products and internal systems. In this book, you'll find the underlying principles of the method and how to apply them to different problems, constraints, and organizational situations. Contextual Design enables you to + gather detailed data about how people work and use systems + develop a coherent picture of a whole customer population + generate systems designs from a knowledge of customer work + diagram a set of existing systems, showing their relationships, inconsistencies, redundancies, and omissions

Table of Contents

Introduction

Gathering Customer Data

Principles of Contextual Inquiry

Contextual Inquiry in Practice

A Language of Work

Work Models

The Interpretation Session

Consolidation

Creating One View of the Customer

Communicating to the Organization

Work Redesign

Using Data to Drive Design

Design from Data

System Design

The User Environment Design

Project Planning and Strategy

Prototyping as a Design Tool

From Structure to User Interface

Iterating with a Prototype

Putting It into Practice

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