Commentary 14 Contextual Inquiry and the Representation of Tasks Barbara Mirel, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois Raven and Flanders make two important contributions in their comprehensive account of the strategies and methods of contextual inquiry. First, by detailing every phase and technique of the process, they help to demystify such "black boxes" as setting an investigative goal and focus, creating questions for artifact walkthroughs, and making sense of collected data for design purposes. The authors provide just the right level of procedural detail to give readers the confidence that they need to apply these inquiry techniques. Second, Raven and Flanders situate the methods of contextual inquiry in a wide-lens view of users' work, a view that includes the vocabularies, concepts, and processes of users' tasks and relevant computer support as well as the priorities, goals and constraints of users' natural work settings; collective efforts and other means for dividing labor; and professional conventions, precedents, and practices. This richly textured, multi-dimensional view of users' work is captured by the three foundational principles of contextual inquiry that Raven and Flanders discuss - context, partnership, and focus. As a long-time advocate of contextual inquiry and testing-- including attending one of Raven's livelyworkshops
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Contextual inquiry and the representation of tasks
Mirel, Barbara
Follow ACM SIGDOC Asterisk Journal of Computer Documentation
, Volume 20 (1)
Association for Computing Machinery – Feb 1, 1996
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