Contextual Inquiry: Getting your foot in the door

The giant meatball behind the contextual design process is the Contextual Inquiry interview. This is a one on one interview with a real person who has a work practice you are interested in designing for. This interview is your chance to see what the user is actual doing and ask all the questions your heart desires.

There is a book called Rapid Design, written by Karen Holtzblatt & Shelley Wood, that describes the interview process in full detail, so I’m not going to do that here. Instead I’m going to share all the problems I have had with the interview so far because even in the few interviews I’ve had, problems have been a plenty. Just complaining about problems, however, is not my style, so I’ll add in solutions as well.

The beginning of my issues all start with getting myself into the interview itself. They won’t let you in their office, they don’t want to give you 2 hours of their time or oddly enough they want their whole team in the room. All of these situations happened to me and I have done my best to get through them all as well.

1. Won’t let you in their office/work space
This one is tricky. If they flat out refuse then there isn’t much you can do about it. My only solutions so far have been to work hard at explaining why I need to be in their workspace before they flat out refuse & smell fabulous. Be friendly and have good breath. No one wants to sit close to someone who stinks.

2. Won’t give you 2 hours of their time
Just forget about this one and don’t fret it. Once the interview gets going and the interviewee has someone who will really listen to them, they can (and will) talk and talk and talk away. Let them say they only have an hours worth of work to show you and smile knowingly to yourself.

3. They want their whole team to be present
This has only happened to me once, so I simply explained the interview setup and said no more. I found that by concentrating on my task at hand and getting the interview done the other people realized they had better things to do then sit there and left.

4. They don’t show up
Bit your lip, don’t think about the fun times you could be having instead of hauling yourself across town in traffic and smile. Not much else you can do, just the nature of the beast.

Tomorrow I’ll move on to issue you can come across while actually doing the contextual inquiry.