Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems (Interactive Technologies) - Softcover

Holtzblatt, Karen; Beyer, Hugh

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1558604111 ISBN 13: 9781558604117

Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann, 1997

Synopsis

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

About this title

About the Authors

Karen Holtzblatt is a co-founder of InContext Enterprises, Inc., a firm that works with companies, coaching teams to design products, product strategies, and information systems from customer data. Karen Holtzblatt developed the Contextual Inquiry field data gathering technique that forms the core of Contextual Design and is now taught and used world-wide.

Hugh Beyer is a co-founder of InContext Enterprises, Inc., a firm that works with companies, coaching teams to design products, product strategies, and information systems from customer data. Hugh Beyer has pioneered the link between the customer-centered front end and object-oriented design.

From the Back Cover

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 system designs from a knowledge of customer work
* diagram a set of existing systems, showing their relationships, inconsistencies, redundancies, and omissions

"The foremost experts on contextual inquiry have packed what they know into a book of substance and intelligence. It lucidly shows how to capture the real requirements of customers adn fit designs to their needs. If you care about your customers and want to understand what they need, then you need this book."
--Larry Constantine, Principal Consultant, Constantine & Locwood, Ltd., Professor of Computing Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney (Australia), Author of Constantine on Peopleware and Software for User

"This book conveys the understanding and wisdom that they [the authors] have gained from their experience in contextual design in a form that is accessible to students and design practitioners. It will serve as a guide and handbook for the next generation of interaction designers, and as a result we can expect the usability and appropriateness of computer systems to be greatly improved."
--Terry Winograd, Stanford University

Edition details

• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1558604111
• ISBN 13: 9781558604117
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 496