16:137:532 - Contextual Inquiry

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

1. User research fundamentals – Categories of user research techniques from observation to ethnography to participatory practices, ethics, and core skills of interviewing, observing, and planning a project.
2. Collect, and analyze users’ qualitative/quantitative data
3. Demonstrate basic principles of contextual inquiry
4. Task and activity analysis– Techniques for observing and noting the steps and interactions in an activity, including activity diagrams and journey maps.
5. Personas and scenarios– Techniques for representing an understanding of users through segmentation,personas, and writing stories or scenarios to communicate the user context.
6. Surveys and other remote data collection methods– An overview of the range of user research techniques including surveys, diary studies, artifact probes, and how to ask questions effectively.
7. Card sorting and analytics – card sorting for information architecture, and ways to use site and search analytics to analyze behavior.
8. Bringing research into the design studio – using the design studio approach for research-based ideation and exploring new ideas.
9. Planning a project – organizing the research toolkit so you can select a balance of methods by type of data collected, whether it is qualitative or quantitative in approach, and where it fits in the user-centered design cycle.