Commentary 25 A Commentary on "Using Contextual Inquiry" Mark Simpson, Microsoft Corporation Over the last five years, there have been a number of articles and books published on "contextual" means of developing computer interfaces. These approaches have ranged from loosely structured customer visits to participatory design techniques. Technical communicators have also recognized the value of the ethnographic techniques on which Contextual Inquiry is based. Raven and Flanders' article is a welcome contribution to this growing body of literature, because they focus on one of these techniques, contextual inquiry, on the thorny problem of understanding audiences and molding that understanding into a solution that addresses the needs of the audiences. With that in mind, I am going to focus this commentary on the few shortcomings of the article and a few shortcomings of the method. My purpose is not to disparage Contextual Inquiry or the article; Contextual Inquiry has tremendous value to technical communicators, and Raven and Flanders go a long way toward making the actual process of doing it accessible. But speaking as one who has participated in Contextual Inquiry projects, I know there are additional considerations that readers should be aware of that have not been adequately
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A commentary on “Using contextual inquiry”
Simpson, Mark
Follow ACM SIGDOC Asterisk Journal of Computer Documentation
, Volume 20 (1)
Association for Computing Machinery – Feb 1, 1996
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