Communications of the ACM - Special issue on analysis and modeling in software development
Making customer-centered design work for teams
Communications of the ACM
If we're a team why don't we act like one?
interactions
Communications of the ACM
Contextual design: principles and practice
Field methods casebook for software design
IEEE Software
| Hi-index | 0.00 |
Field data gathering techniques such as Contextual Inquiry enable a design team to collect the detailed customer data they need for their projects. But when a team wants to apply contextual techniques to their own situation, they are faced with a host of problems. What project should they start with? Is it better to introduce them early or late in the process? Given all the different possible techniques, which will work best for the specific project chosen? How should the customers be chosen and how should visits to them be set up? Who should be on the project? It's no wonder people find it hard to get started with these new techniques in their own organizations.This tutorial gets participants over the roadblocks in the way of using contextual techniques in their projects. We walk through the different aspects of a contextual project, describing the issues that need to be resolved, the different approaches that can work, and the principles which guide making a choice. We use exercises to give participants the chance to plan aspects of their own projects, so they can do the thinking process themselves and raise any questions raised by their own situations.This tutorial is appropriate to anyone wishing to use field methods to gather customer data for their projects. Some familiarity with these methods is assumed.