Contextual design : defining customer-centered systems

Contextual Design Contents; Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems; by Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt; Foreword; Preface; Chapter 1 Introduction; The challenges for design; The challenge of fitting into everyday life; Creating an optimal match to the work; Keeping in touch with the customer; The challenge of design in organizations; Teamwork in the physical environment; Managing face-to-face design; The challenge of design from data; The complexity of work; Maintaining a coherent response; Contextual Design; Part 1 Understanding the Customer; Chapter 2 Gathering Customer Data; Marketing doesn't provide design data; The rocky partnership between IT and its clients; Improving communication with the business; The role of intuition in design; Contextual Inquiry reveals hidden work structure; Chapter 3 Principles of Contextual Inquiry; The master/apprentice model; The four principles of Contextual Inquiry; Context; Partnership; Interpretation; Focus; The contextual interview structure; Chapter 4 Contextual Inquiry in Practice; Setting project focus; Designing the inquiry for commercial products; Designing the inquiry for IT projects; Designing the interviewing situation; Deciding who to interview; Making it work; Part 2 Seeing Work; Chapter 5 A Language of Work; Using language to focus thought; Graphical languages give a whole picture; Work models provide a language for seeing work; Work models reveal the important distinctions; Chapter 6 Work Models; The flow model; Recognizing communication flow; Creating a bird's-eye view of the organization; The sequence model; Collecting sequences during an interview; The artifact model; Collecting artifacts during an interview; Inquiring into an artifact; The cultural model; Recognizing the influence of culture; Making culture tangible; The physical model; Seeing the impact of the physical environment; Showing what matters in the physical environment; The five faces of work; Chapter 7 The Int