Contextual Design
Sara Sprenkle, 2008/09/12 13:01
Read Contextual Design, then write a comment that contains the following information:
- On a scale of 0 to 9, your interest in this paper
- Summarize the three main ideas of the paper, briefly
- How does this paper relate to our class?
- At least one question for class discussion
Discussion
My interest in this paper was an 8 (maybe 7.5 if that's legal.) I thought the ideas were very interesting, but the language was hard for me to read as it seemed more business-centered, like it was selling something.
The three main ideas of the paper were 1)In order for products to be designed effectively, they must use Contextual Design 2) Contextual Design is the idea of involving the designer with the customer through a six step process 3)Contextual Design can change the may an organization is run. It also seemed very high-level with few practical examples.
This paper relates to our class in that it describes a method for iterative design, but extends this process to include preparation for iteration. The idea of preparation is done through Contextual Inquiry, Work Modeling, Consolidation, Work Redesign, and User Environment Design.
I am not sure I fully understand “Work Modeling” or “Consolidation.” Could anyone explain this is great depth with maybe an example?
My interest in this paper is a 6. I thought that it was interesting that the paper added the concept of going into the customers' workplace to design a program around the users' needs, to the basic idea of iterative design, to create contextual design.
The three main ideas of the paper were that contextual design unifies all of the teams that put together products to fill the customers' needs, the designer and the customer must have a “shared interpretation of the work” to create a beneficial product, and the importance of work models in the designer's organization to structure the product for the whole market.
This paper relates to our class since it is in its basic form iterative design. However, this paper goes more in depth by visiting the customer to find out what to design and elaborates on the different types of models that are used, from the models of the interviewed customer versus the models used to consolidate that data from a single interview to stretch across a whole market.
My Questions: Does this complicated version of iterative design reveal better results than the regular iterative design? The paper states that you don't have to use all of the steps is this why they suggest a series of releases, because it's too complicated to try and get the best design the first time around even after using this design?