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Designing User-Oriented Future Ship Bridges
Published in Marcelo M. Soares, Francisco Rebelo, Ergonomics in Design Methods & Techniques, 2016
Mikael Wahlström, Hannu Karvonen, Eija Kaasinen, Petri Mannonen
The approach presented in Figure 14.5 reflects some existing design approaches, contextual design (Beyer and Holtzblatt, 1998) chief among them. Contextual design assumes that good design solutions are created through profound understanding of the use (or work) context. The idea is that “contextual inquiry” precedes the actual design process. This includes studying the work or use context that the new design is to serve. Among the methods are interviews and observations: thereby, shared understanding of the content of the work is developed with the users. Notess (2005) summarizes contextual design in general by suggesting that it applies four core principles. First is the assumption that data on work activity are largely contextual and, therefore, it is the actual work context that is to be studied. The second principle is that designers should work in partnership with users who act as experts. Third, contextual design applies visualizations; that is, the findings from contextual inquiry are presented via diagrams for the purpose of aiding the design process. The fourth principle, that of iteration, implies that the design process is not entirely linear. Instead, it involves paper prototypes that may lead to further refinement of the product. The approach presented inFigure 14.5 is largely in line with these principles of contextual design. Some noteworthy differences from the contextual design approach do, however, exist, these serving the purpose of generating radical design ideas.
Introduction
Published in Julie A. Jacko, The Human–Computer Interaction Handbook, 2012
The same goals apply—fewer errors, faster performance, quicker learning, greater memorability, and being enjoyable—but the emphasis differs. For power plant operation, error reduction is critical, performance enhancement is good, and other goals are less important. For telephone order entry takers performance is critical, and testing an interface that could shave a few seconds from a repetitive operation requires a formal experiment. In contrast, consumers often respond to visceral appeal and initial experience. In assessing designs for mass markets, avoiding obvious problems can be more important than striving for an optimal solution. Less rigorous discount usability or cognitive walk-through methods (Nielsen 1989; Lewis et al. 1990) can be enough. Relatively time-consuming qualitative approaches, such as contextual design or persona use (Beyer and Holtzblatt 1998; Pruitt and Adlin 2006), can provide a deeper understanding when context is critical or new circumstances arise.
Design and Graphical Communication
Published in Roger Timings, Basic Manufacturing, 2006
Contextual design features are those features that have to be included to meet the demands of the general setting, situation or environment in which the product is to be used, that is, the relevance of a design to its working environment and the persons who will be using it. Some of the contextual factors that must be considered could be: Will it be aimed at a specific market (male or female) or will it have universal appeal? Will the product be used indoors or outdoors?If indoors, will it be used in a damp (kitchen or bathroom) or dry (living room) environment?Will it be used in a temperate or a tropical climate?What is the target age group?Will it be used by persons suffering from physical disabilities?
From behaviour to design: implications for artifact ecologies as shared spaces for design activities
Published in Behaviour & Information Technology, 2020
Christina Vasiliou, Andri Ioannou, Panayiotis Zaphiris
As highlighted in industrial approaches such as contextual design the challenge for a technology designer is to construct a detailed understanding of the user behaviour and the possibilities introduced by a prospective technology (Beyer and Holtzblatt 1999). We can obtain this rich understanding by studying a user in its natural settings to propose design implications for the technology in need. Furthermore, recent work in HCI highlighted the need to prototype and understand complex technological set-ups in-the-wild (Crabtree et al. 2013). Such approaches were constructed on the basis of cognitive science and the concepts of ecological and distributed cognition (Hutchins 1995). This work aims to build-up on previous ethnographic research conducted to identify how interactions and work are distributed in a co-located group working within a multi-device setting, with a particular focus on design activities with both physical and digital objects. More specifically, our objective was to provide summative narrations of each one of the five models of DiCoT and extract design implications for constructing artifact ecologies. Furthermore, this work also aims to evaluate the usefulness of DiCoT as an analytical tool for understanding artifact ecologies.
User research and design creativity: three insights for future studies
Published in Behaviour & Information Technology, 2021
Jonas Frich, Michael Mose Biskjaer, Christian Remy, Lindsay MacDonald Vermulen, Peter Dalsgaard
A similar, well-known example of this perspective is that of Contextual Design, which is an ‘approach to designing products directly from a designer's understanding of how the customer works’ (Holtzblatt and Jones 1993). This is important because ‘[g]reat product ideas come from the marriage of a designer's detailed understanding of a customer's need and his or her in-depth understanding of the possibilities introduced by technology’ (Holtzblatt and Jones 1993). The first step of Contextual Design is Contextual Inquiry, which seeks to establish reliable knowledge about the customers' field through interviews and team interpretation sessions, eventually forming the ground for inventing new solutions (Holtzblatt and Jones 1993).
Understanding Interaction Design Challenges in Mobile Extreme Citizen Science
Published in International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 2020
Veljko Pejovic, Artemis Skarlatidou
Contextual design requires that the interface developer observes the users working with the technology in its actual context of use, as opposed to develop a solution in the lab according to a predefined specification. Through iterative participatory design is a solution then tailored to user needs and the actual contextual characteristics. When a software solution is refined through participatory design there are additional benefits of demystifying the solution development process. The users can understand the malleability of software, which allows them to, instead of taking it for granted, request their own changes and additions to the solution (Figure 2(a)).