InContext Enterprises

When you want to learn about the Contextual Design process and concepts, this introductory workshop is the place to start. Three intensive days combine lecture, example, discussion, and hands-on practice, familiarizing you with the key techniques of customer-centered design.

Our 3-day course provides a foundation for designers, developers, usability professionals, product managers, and marketers who want to stop relying on the latest gimmicks and fads, and start creating great experiences for the customers who will use their systems and products. There are no pre-requisites for this class.

Day 1: How to collect and work with individual data
We'll start by showing you how to collect customer data using Contextual Inquiry, a structured process that helps you identify the best candidates for interviews, shows you how to interview customers while they’re working, what to watch for, and which data to collect. Next, we'll show you how to interpret and analyze the data that you've collected by creating work models that give multi-dimensional views of the customer's work practice.

The four principles of contextual interviewing

Tips on what to watch for in interviews, keeping the interview on track, and ensuring the data you collect drives design insights

Five work models that reveal work practice and give a language for communicating insight about work

A process for sharing the interview data, using the diverse perspectives of the team to promote insight, and recording findings

Practical advice on setting the project focus and setting up interviews

Day 2: Building one picture of the customer population
Products are designed for more than one person. On the second day of the course, you’ll learn how to consolidate the models and data across customers, finding the underlying patterns without losing individual variation. You’ll learn to see work's natural structure and how your product can transform it. And you’ll learn how to let the customer data and models drive design.

Practice building affinity diagrams from data recorded during the interpretation exercise

How the affinity drives design conversations and communicates issues to people outside the project

How to consolidate and use each type of model, and how to see their design implications

Developing multiple product visions through grounded brainstorms

Evaluating alternative visions and synthesizing the best of each into a new design through a structured process

Day 3: Structuring a usable system
On the final day, you'll learn how to structure the system for use. Products have to fit into the overall work practice, yet hang together as a system, ensuring positive user experience in the tool. You'll learn how to design and see product structure and then iterate it rapidly with the customer.

Using storyboards to work out the details of a vision as they will affect users

Developing a reverse User Environment to see how an existing system is structured

Developing a software floor plan that creates a system structure, clusters product features that meet users' needs, and provide a detailed framework for requirements

Paper prototyping to test the structure of the system interactively with users

A framework for planning a successful project


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Contextual Design Workshop