1. Topic: Contextual Interview
CPSC 681 – Nov/2009
Josy Oliveira

2. Overview Basic Information Planning Contextual Interview
What is Contextual Interview
Principles
Planning Contextual Interview
Identifying customers
Define framework
Using Multiple Interviewers
Setting the focus before the interview

3. Contextual Interview What is it?
i.ehow.com/.../ /interview1-main_Full.jpg

4. Contextual Interview What is it?

5. Contextual Interview Principles Context

6. Contextual Interview Principals Partnership

7. Contextual Interview Principals Focus

8. Planning Contextual Interview
Identifying customers

9. Planning Contextual Interview
Identifying customers

10. Planning Contextual Interview
Identifying customers

11. Planning Contextual Interview
Identifying customers

12. Planning Contextual Interview
Define a framework
Interview purpose
Schedule Visits
Select initial users
Amount of time the interview will require
Define questions about interviewed work

13. Planning Contextual Interview
Using Multiple Interviewers

14. Planning Contextual Interview
Using Multiple Interviewers
Advantages
Team develops a shared understanding during the interview
Disadvantages
It reduces the number of people we can interview during a visit.

15. Planning Contextual Interview
Setting the focus before the interview
Make notes:
On key areas identified from previous information
Clarifying its purposes
Discusses the notes with users to focus the conversation.

16. Contextual Interview - Advantages
Provides richer details about complex situations.
Gives interviewers a deeper understanding of skills and knowledge needed to do the job. This may help in identifying job-site social and environmental issues that affect performance.

17. Contextual Interview - Advantages
Since the interviewer interviews many interviewees that share the same environment and tools, a consistent vision of work and possible problems is developed because each interviewee can have a different way to view the situation.
Avoids misunderstands because interviewer has many factors (rich data) to analyze and interpret results to find conclusions.

18. Contextual Interview - Disadvantages
It is time consuming to conduct interviews: each interview takes about 2 to 3 hours.
It is difficult to schedule interviews: find companies and people that want to participate. When you find a company, it is hard to book interviews that optimize the time of the interviewer and the avoid overlapping of interviews (interviewed available time).
It has high cost: the interviewer must spend many hours interviewing.

19. Contextual Interview - Disadvantages
Requires a very skilled interviewer: interviewers need to know very well whom, what, and when to ask questions.
Can disrupt the work process: users will have a strange person observing them. This can decrease their performance.

20. Contextual Interview - Exercise
Let’s say that Microsoft has created a new .net framework, .net framework 4. The framework is in the beta version and is available to developers. Microsoft needs to know what these developers think about .net framework 4 and which problems they are finding.

21. Contextual Interview - Exercise
Microsoft has done a survey in order to identify the problems with its new framework, but only a few people answered. Then, Microsoft decided to do interviews, but the answers were very abstract. Developers said that the new framework has many problems, but when the interviewer asked about which problems they had, interviewees could not give a direct answer or describe a specific problem.

22. Contextual Interview - Exercise
After having such troubled feedback, Microsoft decided to conduct Contextual interviews. To accomplish this goal, Microsoft decided to contract a Contextual Interview specialist.
So, what do you think that this specialist need to do?

23. Bibliography
Beyer, Hugh, and Holtzblatt, Karen, Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems, by Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc., 1998, Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, pages 41 to 136. (**)
Holtzblatt, Karen, and Jones, Sandra, Human-Computer Interactions: Toward the Year 2000, by R. M. Baecker, J. Grudin, W. A. S. Buxton, and S. Greenberg, pp (**)
Holtzblatt, Karen, Wendell, Jessamyn Burns, and Wood, Shelley, Rapid Contextual Design, by Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc., 2005, chapters 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Pages 21 to 122.
(**) Recommended read

24. Contextual Interview
Thank you!

25. Contextual Interview