Assignment 1: Contextual Inquiry

Important dates:

  • Assigned: Tuesday, January 30th
  • Due: Thursday, February 15th

Overview

This is the first in a series of three assignments in which you’ll engage with different parts of the HCI and Design Thinking process. In this assignment, you’ll use the method of contextual inquiry to develop an initial understanding of users and their tasks in a specific domain. In future assignments, you will build on your work from earlier assignments using the techniques you are learning about in class and from the readings.

This assignment will be done in pairs. You will not necessarily need to stick with the same partner for other assignments and/or your final project, but you may choose to.

Scenario

You are a product manager for a startup focused on workplace productivity tools. Observe and interview people as they do their jobs, schedule tasks for themselves, plan their days, schedule meetings with teammates, engage in deep work, make joint decisions with collaborators, and/or perform another task related to work and/or productivity.

Conduct a contextual inquiry in which you interact with at least two people in one or more settings of your choice. You should select settings that are representative of the context of the prompt, accessible to you, and, ideally, interesting to you. Here are some examples of ways to position yourself in a relevant setting:

  • Sit with your friend as they work on an assignment for another class. Gain an understanding of how they approach the task, maintain focus, and handle distractions if they arise.
  • Attend a lab or project meeting (virtually or in-person). Gain an understanding of how teammates coordinate around shared projects, schedule meetings, and assign subtasks.
  • Shadow someone as they plan their tasks for the week, using either a physical planner or a digital tool. Gain an understanding of how they prioritize, how they categorize their tasks, and how they manage their time.

This is not an exhaustive list – you’re welcome to use choose any setting you can think of that is related to work and/or productivity. The only exception: Do not observe someone doing work for this class.

A reminder: Regardless of what setting(s) you choose, make sure that your research is ethical and minimally disruptive. Obtain informed consent from all involved parties, and, if necessary, seek permission from an authority who oversees the setting (e.g., the PI if observing a lab meeting).

You may choose to split up the work however you see fit. You may want to each conduct one interview and then compare your findings, or you may both want to be present for both interviews with one person leading the inquiry and the other taking notes.

Recall this slide from class:

Title of slide: "How do we get this information?" Body: Step 0: Have a sense of what you think you will do. Step 1: Watch, listen, and talk to a bunch of people. Collect a lot of detailed and sometimes contradictory information about what they are doing, what they are struggling with, what they want, etc. Step 2: Make sense of the information they provide. Use techniques like affinity diagramming and card sort to identify themes. Step 3: Reevaluate your early vision from Step 0. Is your plan the right one? Does it meet people’s needs? Is it meeting people’s needs in the right way? If any of these is a “no” / “maybe not”: Refine the idea, return to Step 1

This assignment is part of Step 1. Therefore, you need to start with a Step 0.

Start by coming up with an initial set of assumptions. This should not be a design, an interaction or anything resembling a proposed solution (you don’t know what the “problem” is yet, or if there even is one!) – it’s simply a capture of the starting point for your information gathering process, and it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. What needs do you think people might have that isn’t being met by the current state of the world? What goals do you think people are trying to or might try to achieve (not necessarily consciously) around productivity?

Once you’ve made note of your assumptions, develop a plan for your contextual inquiry. Contextual inquiry involves both observing and asking. As you observe the user in their “natural habitat”, you interrupt at appropriate times to ask them questions about what they are doing, what they are thinking, and how they are problem-solving. You should come in with a set of questions that you intend to ask, but bear in mind that you may or may not end up asking them in order.

Take detailed notes on what the people you interact with say and do. These can be handwritten or typed, but bear in mind that you will be asked to digitize them later. You will not turn them in as part of this assignment, but you will use them later in the class.

You may choose to record the interviews and take notes after the fact if that is easier for you. If you do this, by Massachusetts Law, you MUST obtain the consent of the person you are interviewing AND anyone else who might inadvertently be recorded. This is true whether you are meeting in-person or virtually. It is not enough to ask only the permission of the authority overseeing the meeting to record (to revisit the lab example: you must get consent from every lab member, not just the PI, to record). Therefore, it is wise to only record if you are in a private location where it is easy to obtain the consent of all recorded parties.

Plan to spend 30-60 minutes on each of the two interviews.

What you’ll turn in

Your final submission should take the form of a single 2-3 page report (one document for the both of you) of your contextual inquiry exercise. The report should address the following:

  • What was your initial idea from “Step 0”? Identify the assumed need(s), state the goal(s) that you believe people have, and explain the intervention (i.e., innovation, design) that you propose to address the need(s) and help people meet the goal(s).
  • Who did you interview?
  • How did you obtain informed consent?
  • Where and when did you observe/interview them? How long did the session last?
  • What questions did you ask?
  • What did you learn from your interviews? (You do not need to thoroughly analyze your notes using formal qualitative analysis methods – just describe your initial impressions.)
  • Revisit your “Step 0”: Did your understanding of needs and goals change after the contextual inquiry? If so, how?
  • Contributions: How did you divide the work? What was each partner’s role in conducting the contextual inquiry?

The report should be written in prose (not bullets) and read like a short research paper. You do not have to answer each question in order, but you will be graded on whether and how effectively each one is addressed. You may want to include images, excerpts from your interview protocol and/or quotes from participants to help tell the story of your research.

Rubric

You will receive a grade out of 100% based on a 20-point rubric. You will be graded on whether the basic requirements of the assignments are met, how well your report addresses the questions above, and the overall clarity and organization of your work. By default, partners will receive the same grade. In exceptional circumstances, I may make adjustments to individual grades based on an individual’s contributions (or lack thereof).

Grading breakdown (total: 20pts)

Assignment requirements (12pts):

  • Does your report document include both teammates’ names? (1pt)

  • Does your report articulate a clear problem space that goes beyond the general topic of “productivity”? Does it explain your research question/starting point/”Step 0”? (2pts)

    Examples of this:

    Topic area Research question
    Teamwork logistics How do people schedule meetings? What are the challenges and needs of longterm collaborators?
    Debugging How do people debug their code? What are the challenges and needs of programmers working on software?
    Task tracking How do students keep track of what they need to do and have already done? What are their challenges and needs?
  • Does your report describe your research guide and how you developed it? (2pts)
    • List or summarize the questions you planned to ask. Refer to the lecture slides for pointers on creatng the research guide.

  • Does your report describe the user group/characterization you focused on and why you picked that group or type of user? (1pt)

  • Does your report describe how you introduced the interview to the participant? (1pt)
    • Include an explanation of how you obtained informed consent.

  • Does your report describe the context of both/all of your interviews? (2pts)

  • Does your report describe your findings? (2pts)
    • Summarize some (not necessarily all) of your notes. What are your initial takeaways? Do you know more than you did about your research question when you started? Did your inquiries inspire you to want to ask a new, different research question instead?
  • Does your report describe each team member’s individual contributions? (1pt)
    • Keep this brief (e.g., “Teammates A and B each interviewed one person, we divided up the writing for the report, and teammate A did the final edits”).
Presentation and clarity (4pts):

Is the report well-organized and easy to follow? (4pts)

Holistic evaluation (4pts):

Overall, and despite omissions and/or weaknesses in other rubric categories, does your report meet the objectives of the assignment? (4pts)

Remember:

This assignment is intended to get you to practice the skill of interviewing people for research, with a focus on doing so in-context. You should prioritize the process of preparing for the interview, going into the context, and conducting the interview over generating groundbreaking or novel insights. What you find may not be groundbreaking or particularly surprising, but you would not have found it if you hadn’t observed and asked. Your report won’t be judged on the novelty of your response to the “What did you learn?” question above – what’s important is that you practice, reflect on, and clearly articulate your process.