Introduction

Recently, in-depth research has shown that products or services should be designed to meet an existing need. In others words you don’t create products and begin to search for customers.

Rather, you find customers and create products that would solve their problems.

Therefore, the contextual inquiry was designed or created to help researchers understand user behavior and their unique preferences. Contextual inquiry is carried out by observing respondents or participants of research within their personal space in terms of their culture, customs, habits, and within their location.

Contextual design has been adopted as a popular method in design thinking, and agile methodology and has now become a popular method of research in the tech and product development space. 

In this article, we will delve into the meaning of contextual inquiry, the principle that guides it, the differences, when to use or adopt it, and how to use it.

 Lastly, we will show you how Formplus, a powerful and flexible data collection software can help you in designing and conducting your contextual inquiry research.

What is Contextual Inquiry?

Contextual inquiry is a research methodology or technique that is based on observing individuals in their natural environment. The essence is to gain insights into how users interact with a particular product within their own unique personal spaces or environment, in other to understand them better, figure out what motivates them, and most importantly help them meet their needs.

Contextual Inquiry employs a user-centered design and the method was first introduced by  Karen Holtzblatt and Hugh Beyer in their book “Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems.” 

Contextual inquiry involves 3 main steps.

1. Observation

This involves studying the user in their natural habitat so to speak. This helps the researcher to see firsthand how the users interact with a product or service and ultimately any difficulty they encounter while using the product.

2. Interview

 Here, the researcher asks questions from the users of a product or service to gain deep insight into the unique needs of the respondents, their aspirations, and what drives them. This gives insight into the perspective of the users and shows how the product or service affects their daily lives.

Read Also – Consumer Insights: Types, Examples & Tools Guide

3. Analysis

This occurs after the stage of observation and interview has been completed, after which the researcher gathers all the information collected and analyzes it to identify patterns, gain insights, and ultimately pinpoint opportunities for improvement of a product or service. 

Principles of Contextual Inquiry

Contextual Inquiry relies on 4 principles and they are:

Context

 Refers to conducting the research within the user’s life, work, environment, culture, and location. This is in other to see what happens in the user’s personal space and get real-time insight from the user’s perspective.

In a nutshell, the context inquiry includes all the ways a user interacts with a product or service, this way you can identify their unique challenges and develop smart ways to proffer custom solutions to their problems. Simply put contextual inquiry is all about observing your customers in their environment and watching them do their jobs.

Focus

When conducting contextual inquiry research, the focus is key and in this regard, your focus would be the purpose of the research or the problem you are trying to solve with your research. That way you can keep your interview or inquiry within the boundaries of your aim. 

This helps you not to stray to other topics or become distracted.

Partnership

 While contextual inquiries can be carried out by one individual, it is much easier when there is a partnership of collaboration between at least 2 individuals. There are two partnership models to help you do this.

In the first instance, it is conducted using the following method:

The first method is done by having 2 researchers conduct the study. Here one person watches and asks questions while the other person or partner takes notes and observes and records behaviors.

In the other instance as a lone researcher, you are partnering with the respondent during the research while observing and learning about their work.

Interpretation

 In contextual inquiry, the researcher and the customer (respondent) are in a sort of relationship, where the customer is the authority and the researcher is more like a student, observing and interpreting the actions or inactions of the respondent.

Afterward, the researcher seeks to interpret their observations intelligently. In other to do this the customer is actively involved in the interpretation process to ensure that their actions were not misunderstood.

Pros and Cons of Contextual Inquiry:

Pros:

• Contextual inquiry interviews usually lead to accurate results, as the participants are interviewed in their comfort zone, which guarantees the quality and accuracy of the information provided.
• It provides deep insight into the needs of the users, their motivations, and their habits.
• It fosters engagement between the participants and the researchers, this builds empathy and uncovers any challenges the users face.
• It helps improves the product design process, by helping the researchers understand the context within which a product or service is used or applied. This ensures that products are honed to fit the customer’s or users’ demands.
• Improves the acceptance rate of new products as the products are designed to fit the unique preferences of users, based on their specific use, environment, and the like.

Cons:

• This research method can be time-consuming, as the interviews in contextual Inquiry are carried out with one participant at a time.
• Secondly, the participants are in control of the process to a large extent, so their pace determines the length of the process.
• Most times, interpreting the data gathered correctly from this method, requires a combination of other research methods to validate the result.
• Sometimes the researchers encounter difficulty in getting the buy-in of the users, as they have to explain why they need to invade the privacy of the participants to gather results.
• Since the research is carried out within a context, it may limit the scope of the research as the researchers have to stay focused within the limit of the context being studied.
• Lastly, sometimes the behavior of the participants may be unnatural due to the presence of the researchers.
• A contextual inquiry may be unsuitable for all research questions or situations.

How to Conduct a Contextual Inquiry

Here are the steps to conducting a contextual inquiry.

• Step 1:

Define the purpose of the study/or the problem your research aims to solve. This will serve as a guide.

• Step 2:

Identify the participants most suited to your reach in terms of location, and demographics. behavior, patterns.

• Step 3: 

Carry out observations in the natural habitat so to speak of your participants. This ensures that your research is within a particular context. Take notes /record videos on all actions observed and any challenges encountered.

• Step 4:

Carry out interviews with the users by asking open-ended questions that would give you deep insights into their perspectives, motivations, and general behavior.

• Step 5:

Interpret and analyze your data intelligently by identifying patterns, themes, and areas that need improvement and innovation.

Contextual Inquiry vs. Contextual Interview

Contextual inquiry and contextual interview are both research methods used to gather insights into user behaviors. However, they differ in approach and aim or purpose.

Contextual inquiry observes users in their environment, asks them questions about their activities, and interprets the data.

The contextual inquiry aims to understand users’ perspective motivation within a specific scope.

Contextual interview on the other involves asking users questions regarding their experience and opinions bout a product or service. It is a more controlled approach that helps researchers gather relevant information regarding a product or service.

Read Also – Structured vs Unstructured Interviews: 13 Key Differences

When to Use Contextual Inquiry

Repurposing an Existing Product or Service

Contextual inquiry is useful when you want an in-depth understanding of a user’s needs, and motivations or you simply want to understand the behaviors of your customers in other to create custom-fit products that would appeal to them.

For instance, if you are designing a new mobile app for children teachers, you would need to understand the exact challenges faced by children teachers in their daily work.

Contextual inquiry can also be useful in identifying areas of improvement and innovation in an existing product or service. This is so because when you observe users in their natural environment, it can highlight opportunities for innovation to an existing product or a new service.

Conducting User Research

Contextual inquiry helps in user research, as it helps researchers gain an understanding of the area or scope within which a customer uses a product or service and how they interact with their environment.

Carrying Out Ethnographic Research

Contextual inquiry is great for ethnographic research, as it allows teachers to understand the culture, environment, and social context of the users.

Designing a New Product or Service

 When creating or designing a new product contextual inquiry comes in handy, because it helps you understand the unique need of the user persona of your products.

Ordinarily, you would not have access to the needs, behaviors, attributes, and scope within which your products or service are used. Context inquiry gives you an edge by letting you access this information to help you design custom-fit products that would be a market success.

Contextual inquiry exposes areas where a product or service is not meeting a need, as the users are observed in their environment. This insight can help developers repurpose a product or service to meet a specific demand brought to light by the Contextual Inquiry study.

How Formplus Can Help with Contextual Inquiry

Formplus is a powerful data-gathering software that can make your contextual inquiry study more effective and can help you to conduct contextual inquiry more effectively. Formplus has a rich library of forms and survey templates that can be customized to fit and include specific fields based on your requirements.

With Formplus, researchers can include different types of questions, like multiple choice, open-ended, and Likert scale questions. This aids researchers to collect both quantitative and qualitative data.

There is also a wide array of features useful for contextual inquiry, like the ability to embed videos and images in your forms or surveys.

The advanced automated analysis and reporting feature can help you process your data, making it easy to identify patterns and themes all in real-time.

The survey forms templates on Formplus are all mobile-friendly and can be accessed on any device, therefor users can access them in their natural environment. Best of all, Formplus allows for collaboration between researchers, as multiple researchers can access the forms and view them at the same time, making it easy to work together on a research project.

Conclusion

Contextual inquiry is a valuable research method, performed with consumers of a product or service in their natural environment, in other to understand the intricate behaviors of users, their unique preferences, their needs, and area that need improvement or innovations.

Although contextual inquiry may not be ideal for all research questions or situations, it is an effective tool for designing custom-fit products or services for consumers.

With the help of tools like Formplus, conducting contextual inquiry can be more effective and efficient, allowing researchers to gather and analyze data more quickly and accurately.