Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems (Interactive Technologies)

Beyer, Hugh

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1558604111 ISBN 13: 9781558604117

Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann, 1997

This book introduces a customer-centered approach to business. In this book, you'll find the underlying principles of the method and how to apply them to different problems, constraints, and organizational situations.

Review:

"If necessity is the mother of invention, then if you don't know what the users need you can't invent. Karen and Hugh present a step-by-step way to uncover, understand, and use those needs. If developers are not already using techniques like those presented here, they should read this book carefully to see what they are missing."
―-Dan Bricklin, co-creator of VisiCalc

"Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt are widely recognized as the foremost experts on contextual inquiry, and they have packed what they know into a book of both substance and intelligence. It has been a long wait but worth it. The book lucidly shows how to capture the real requirements of customers and how to tailor designs to fit their needs. If you care about your customers and want to create products they as well as want, then you need to understand contextual inquiry and contextual design. You need this book."
--Larry Constantine, Principal Consultant, Constantine & Locwood, Ltd.; Professor of Computing Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney (Australia); Author of Constantine on Peopleware and Software for User

"For many years, Beyer and Holtzblatt have been pioneers in the field of human-computer interaction, showing how the context of computer use can be (and needs to be) the central focus of analysis and design. 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, and as a result we can expect the usability and appropriateness of computer systems to be greatly improved."
--Terry Winograd, Stanford University

From the Back Cover:

This is a practical, hands-on guide for anyone trying to design systems that reflect 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 system designs from a knowledge of customer work
* diagram a set of existing systems, showing their relationships, inconsistencies, redundancies, and omissions

"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 requirements of customers adn 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 & Locwood, Ltd., Professor of Computing Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney (Australia), Author of Constantine on Peopleware and Software for User

"This book conveys the understanding and wisdom that they [the authors] 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, and as a result we can expect the usability and appropriateness of computer systems to be greatly improved."
--Terry Winograd, Stanford University|This is a practical, hands-on guide for anyone trying to design systems that reflect 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 system designs from a knowledge of customer work
* diagram a set of existing systems, showing their relationships, inconsistencies, redundancies, and omissions

"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 requirements of customers adn 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 & Locwood, Ltd., Professor of Computing Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney (Australia), Author of Constantine on Peopleware and Software for User

"This book conveys the understanding and wisdom that they [the authors] 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, and as a result we can expect the usability and appropriateness of computer systems to be greatly improved."
--Terry Winograd, Stanford University