Morgan Kaufmann Publishers; ISBN: 1558604111

This is a practical, hands-on guide for anyone trying to design systems that reflects 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.

Praise for Contextual Design

“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 customer requirements and 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 & Lockwood, Ltd.;
Professor of Computing Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia;
Author of Constantine on Peopleware and Software for Use

“This book conveys the understanding and wisdom that they 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; as a result, we can expect the usability and appropriateness of computer systems to be greatly improved.”

—Terry Winograd, Professor, Stanford University

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