Our Perspective
Our Blog
View all posts
Designing Services
by Hugh Beyer
The fun thing about being a consultant is that you get to work with lots of different teams and lots of different companies. And that means you get to work on very different types of problems. With that in mind, let me tell you about my week.
I was coaching a firm that provides HR expertise. [...]
Executing in the Fuzzy Front End
by Larry Marturano
It’s strange how the concept of execution gets linked almost solely with operations. What would happen if we applied “execution” to the “fuzziness” of development’s front end?
InContext is Hiring
by Larry Marturano
InContext Design is looking for energetic and talented Interaction Designers and User Researchers — we call them “Work Practice Designers” — for our locations in Boston and Chicago.
A Long Term Affair
by Kelley Wagg
I’ve used numerous marketing processes and many development lifecycles during my career but it wasn’t until I encountered Contextual Design that I fell in love.
Organizational Empathy
by Larry Marturano
In a previous post, I talked about what I called “disciplinary empathy” – the ability to get out of one’s acculturated box and see problems from the point of view of other peoples’ expertise and training. I made the observation that people I’ve run across with high disciplinary empathy are remarkably innovative in teams. Because [...]
Connectivity Week 2009
by Karen Holtzblatt
Energy utilities are ready to cross over the boundary of the energy meter and into your life. At Connectivity Week I had the pleasure of participating on one of their keynote panels. Here are some thoughts about the state of our utilities and how things are evolving.
Creativity from the Ground Up
by Larry Marturano
Every so often, I’m faced with the realization that something I really believe isn’t so. There’s that momentary sense of profound disorientation that forces me to stop and really think—and adjust myself to a new reality.
Sure, that whole Easter Bunny realization was a downer, but over the years I’ve come to really like this feeling—almost [...]
Essential Agile
by Hugh Beyer
The essential core of agile is fast iterations tested with user feedback. Everything else is there to make that core work better, faster, or in a more organized way. Throw away everything else if you must but don’t trade off this core. Let me explain why…
T-Shaped Teams
by Larry Marturano
I heard once that our biggest mistakes buy us our most meaningful insights. Not that it’s very fun, mind you. But it’s true, we do learn from our mistakes. And for those of us who are not airline pilots or surgeons, they can be positive, career-changing insights.
When I was first putting teams together as a [...]
Innovation is Easy
by Hugh Beyer
People usually think that coming up with an innovative idea is the hard part. But as I see it, that’s the easy part. The hard part is actually acting on the innovation.
Sustainable Brands 2009
by Dave Flotree
For sustainability advocates, the “live within our means” trend is looking much better than during the past couple decades. People are consuming less and more carefully. But will the people who are conserving and sacrificing now want to keep that up once the recession is over?
Journey to the Center of the Human Psyche
by Karen Holtzblatt
Reading after a show or movie is not just “being in the know” or “being part of a community”. It’s not just about having something to talk to others about. It’s also about our reluctance to let go of something that is part of our lives no longer—it is about re-experiencing as a human driver.
“Rapid Contextual Design” is Translated Into Korean
by Hugh Beyer
This hands-on guide for people who need practical direction on how to use the Contextual Design process and adapt it to tactical projects with tight timelines has now been translated into Korean. A Japanese version will be published in January 2010. These two translations are in response to the high interest in Contextual Design [...]
Interaction Design and the Boston Subway
by David Rondeau
Today interaction design includes much more than what we see on our computer screens. It has a much wider impact on people’s everyday lives—even when they don’t own a computer. Because of this, we need to start thinking about interaction design as more than just buttons or functions arranged on a screen. Let me use [...]
InContext at PDMA 2009 International Conference
by Karen Holtzblatt
PDMA is the Product Development and Management Association. At this year’s international conference, I’ll be appearing with several industry thought leaders in a workshop called Finding the Collective Brilliance through Product Design and Integration.
October 31-November 4, 2009. Anaheim, California, USA.
InContext at Agile 2009 Conference
by Hugh Beyer
Agile 2009 is the yearly international conference on agile software development. I’ll be presenting a tutorial called Four Core Concepts for Fast User Feedback in which I’ll be talking about techniques for getting good (and real) customer feedback into agile iterations. It should be a good time–these conferences are generally fun and insightful. See you [...]
Hey! You’re Standing in My Space!
by Hugh Beyer
This year I made it to the CHI (Computer/Human Interaction) conference for the first time in a while. It was fun to see old friends and new research—lots of thought-provoking papers and some fun and cool technology.
But it’s the keynote that really struck a chord with me. Judith Olson talked about body language and its [...]
The Irreverence of Users
by Karen Holtzblatt
Technology creates miracles big and small over and over and over—but as soon as we have it we expect more and more and more. Users of technology don’t care what miracles we give them—they take it all for granted.
Differentiate with Simplicity
by Kelley Wagg
As a marketing professional at a large company for many years, I—along with my peers—always struggled to find ways to differentiate our products. What whizzy new feature can we include that no one else has? But occasionally a product comes along and reminds me that a key differentiator can be simplicity itself.
How Do You Persuade Non-Environmental People to Conserve?
by Dave Flotree
To better understand what real actions people are taking in light of growing public concern over the environmental impact of energy consumption, InContext recently studied how everyday people make energy choices around the home.
Design Opportunities: Look Between the Spaces of Life
by Karen Holtzblatt
People wonder why the iPhone is so compelling. To me, it’s not the ease of use, the physical design or the applications… it’s the way it fits into the spaces in peoples’ lives. That’s the key lesson we need to learn as designers.
A Good Week
by Hugh Beyer
It’s been a good week. Some days you go home wondering what you accomplished; other days you feel like you really earned your keep. That’s the kind of week I had. Here’s the story.
The Travel Argument
by Hugh Beyer
How not having an argument can reveal subtleties of team dynamics…
