Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems

by Karen Holtzblatt, Hugh Beyer

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

Genres: Design, Nonfiction, Usability, Professional Development, Software, Reference, Technology

472 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1997

Reviews

[Jess]

This book was published in 1998, but it's surprisingly still relevant.

To be honest, I skimmed over most of the content. It's a huge book and it covers a lot of what I already know.

I thoroughly read the chapters on contextual inquiry (field studies). I bought this book because several folks recommended it for learning about field studies. Those chapters were great. I plan to use this book as a reference for field work.

[Matt Watkinson]

If really, really need to understand your users, you really, really should learn about the contextual design methodology.

[Samuel]

Contextual design is great for eliciting requirements for specific types of software if you or the customer really doesn't know what the customer wants. All this assumes you have access to the end user which unfortunately isn't always the case. The process is useful where it can be applied, but it can't be applied everywhere.

[Ken Ficara]

Contextual Design : A Customer-Centered Approach to Systems Designs (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies) by Hugh Beyer (1997)

[Petra]

A bit outdated, but still full with basic knowlede valid and applicable to every interace project.