Contextual
Field Studies
Issue addressed
“How can we be sure that our product will fit in well with the end-user’s natural environment, and with the way they do things? Are we missing anything important that we couldn’t anticipate?”
Your challenge: Make sure the user's environment won't break your product
Usability problems often arise because the physical or operational context in which the product would be used in the real-world was not anticipated by the design team, nor were they mentioned by end-users using requirements gathering methods.
I can conduct a contextual field study in the physical environment in which the end-user will be using your product. The goal is to uncover significant and otherwise unanticipated aspects of the real-world environment that impact the usage of the product. Many of these issues cannot be identified even by the very individuals who work in the environment. Requirements for a truly useful and usable solution can be identified, and problems avoided.
This sort of study is useful in situations where your product is attempting to provide an online solution to a process that is currently "hands-on". For complex or specialized environments, a field-study is especially critical for identifying important issues that will impact the usefulness and usability of the product.
My service employs scientific field-study techniques to identify essential aspects of the physical or operational environment that need to be accomodated in your product's design, as well as their interactions with organizational processes and human behavior.
An example:
A good analyst will notice that discriminating shoppers for “high-end” audio speakers tend to remove the grill-cloths to inspect the woofer, tweeter, and mid-range driver configuration, and also inspect the binding post configuration (the connectors that accept the wires). An effective web site should provide this segment of on-line shoppers the equivalent view.
Last update: May 07, 2002
(c) 2002 Don Hameluck Usability Consulting Inc.
