Contextual application design

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Contextual application design in digital media is the adaptation of the contextual design process developed by Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt, [1] in the mobile software space, taking advantage of the measurability of the media, context awareness technologies in mobile devices, aggregation and analytics systems, to create a user-centered design process where developers aggregate data from users' real-world behavior and patterns, and applying these findings into a final product.

Contents

Uses and adaptations

Contextual application design has primarily been used to create mobile applications that may deliver valuable insights based on cross referencing digital content with physical context, such as the experience delivered by Google Now. Another implementation is to create applications with a user interface that is reactive to context using context-sensitive user interface. These methods have also been implemented for software, [2] and parts of contextual design have been adapted for use as a usability evaluation method. [3]

Process overview

The contextual design process consists of the following: contextual inquiry, data consolidation and analytics, visioning, storyboarding, user environment design, and prototyping.

Collecting data – contextual inquiry

Contextual inquiry is a field data collection technique used to capture detailed information about how users of a product interact with the product in their normal environment. In mobile applications, a key aspect of the technique is detailed logging of their physical environment factors (factors), typically achieved by logging mobile sensor data or data from a contextual awareness SDK, combined with their in-app activity and interaction. Key takeaways from the technique are to learn what users actually do, why they do it that way and when.

Data analytics

The purpose of the data analysis is to reveal patterns and the structure across distinct interactions. A contextual data analytics collects data logs, events and context awareness parameters and streams them into an easy to process database which may be queried to provide insights. A typical example would be the system implemented by Sensiya Analytics.

Visioning

In visioning, a cross-functional team comes together to vision and suggest better performing experiences based on reviewing the data and identifying key issues and opportunities. Visions are a variety of new product concepts for different usage scenarios based on the data collected.

Storyboarding

After visioning, a design team develops the vision in storyboards, capturing scenarios of how users will work with the new system under different context.

Software prototyping

Software prototyping is used for testing the design ideas with interactive prototypes before the implementation phase helps the designers communicate with users about the new system and develop the design further.

Related Research Articles

Usability engineering is a field that is concerned generally with human–computer interaction and specifically with devising human–computer interfaces that have high usability or user friendliness. It provides structured methods for achieving efficiency and elegance in interface design.

Paper prototyping

In human–computer interaction, paper prototyping is a widely used method in the user-centered design process, a process that helps developers to create software that meets the user's expectations and needs—in this case, especially for designing and testing user interfaces. It is throwaway prototyping and involves creating rough, even hand-sketched, drawings of an interface to use as prototypes, or models, of a design. While paper prototyping seems simple, this method of usability testing can provide useful feedback to aid the design of easier to use products. This is supported by many usability professionals.

Usability Capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying it

Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a software can be used by specified consumers to achieve quantified objectives with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a quantified context of use.

Context awareness refers, in Information and Communication Technologies, to a capability to take into account the situation of entities, which may be users or devices, but are not limited to those. Location is only the most obvious element of this situation. Narrowly defined for mobile devices, context awareness does thus generalize location awareness. Whereas location may determine how certain processes around a contributing device operate, context may be applied more flexibly with mobile users, especially with users of smart phones. Context awareness originated as a term from ubiquitous computing or as so-called pervasive computing which sought to deal with linking changes in the environment with computer systems, which are otherwise static. The term has also been applied to business theory in relation to contextual application design and business process management issues.

User-Centered Design (UCD) or User-Driven Development (UDD) is a framework of processes in which usability goals, user characteristics, environment, tasks and workflow of a product, service or process are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process. These tests are conducted with/without actual users during each stage of the process from requirements, pre-production models and post production, completing a circle of proof back to and ensuring that "development proceeds with the user as the center of focus." Such testing is necessary as it is often very difficult for the designers of a product to understand intuitively what a first-time user of their design experiences, and what each user's learning curve may look like. User-centered design is based on the understanding of a user, their demands, priorities and experiences and when used, is known to lead to an increased product usefulness and usability as it delivers satisfaction to the user.

Requirements analysis Engineering process

In systems engineering and software engineering, requirements analysis focuses on the tasks that determine the needs or conditions to meet the new or altered product or project, taking account of the possibly conflicting requirements of the various stakeholders, analyzing, documenting, validating and managing software or system requirements.

Systems development life cycle Systems engineering term

In systems engineering, information systems and software engineering, the software development life cycle (SDLC), also referred to as the application development life-cycle, is a process for planning, creating, testing, and deploying an information system. The systems development life cycle concept applies to a range of hardware and software configurations, as a system can be composed of hardware only, software only, or a combination of both. There are usually six stages in this cycle: requirement analysis, design, development and testing, implementation, documentation, and evaluation.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to human–computer interaction:

Software prototyping is the activity of creating prototypes of software applications, i.e., incomplete versions of the software program being developed. It is an activity that can occur in software development and is comparable to prototyping as known from other fields, such as mechanical engineering or manufacturing.

Service design is the activity of planning and arranging people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality, and the interaction between the service provider and its users. Service design may function as a way to inform changes to an existing service or create a new service entirely.

User interface design

User interface (UI) design or user interface engineering is the design of user interfaces for machines and software, such as computers, home appliances, mobile devices, and other electronic devices, with the focus on maximizing usability and the user experience. The goal of user interface design is to make the user's interaction as simple and efficient as possible, in terms of accomplishing user goals.

Object-oriented design is the process of planning a system of interacting objects for the purpose of solving a software problem. It is one approach to software design.

User experience design is the process of supporting user behavior through usability, usefulness, and desirability provided in the interaction with a product. User experience design encompasses traditional human–computer interaction (HCI) design and extends it by addressing all aspects of a product or service as perceived by users. Experience design (XD) is the practice of designing products, processes, services, events, omnichannel journeys, and environments with a focus placed on the quality of the user experience and culturally relevant solutions. Experience design is not driven by a single design discipline. Instead, it requires a cross-discipline perspective that considers multiple aspects of the brand, business, environment and experience from product, packaging, and retail environment to the clothing and attitude of employees. Experience design seeks to develop the experience of a product, service, or event along any or all of the following dimensions:

Contextual design (CD) is a user-centered design process developed by Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt. It incorporates ethnographic methods for gathering data relevant to the product via field studies, rationalizing workflows, and designing human–computer interfaces. In practice, this means that researchers aggregate data from customers in the field where people are living and applying these findings into a final product. Contextual design can be seen as an alternative to engineering and feature driven models of creating new systems.

In information systems, applications architecture or application architecture is one of several architecture domains that form the pillars of an enterprise architecture (EA).

Interaction technique

An interaction technique, user interface technique or input technique is a combination of hardware and software elements that provides a way for computer users to accomplish a single task. For example, one can go back to the previously visited page on a Web browser by either clicking a button, pressing a key, performing a mouse gesture or uttering a speech command. It is a widely used term in human-computer interaction. In particular, the term "new interaction technique" is frequently used to introduce a novel user interface design idea.

In software engineering, a software development process is the process of dividing software development work into smaller, parallel or sequential steps or subprocesses to improve design, product management, and project management. It is also known as a software development life cycle (SDLC). The methodology may include the pre-definition of specific deliverables and artifacts that are created and completed by a project team to develop or maintain an application.

Spatial contextual awareness consociates contextual information such as an individual's or sensor's location, activity, the time of day, and proximity to other people or objects and devices. It is also defined as the relationship between and synthesis of information garnered from the spatial environment, a cognitive agent, and a cartographic map. The spatial environment is the physical space in which the orientation or wayfinding task is to be conducted; the cognitive agent is the person or entity charged with completing a task; and the map is the representation of the environment which is used as a tool to complete the task.

Educational data mining (EDM) describes a research field concerned with the application of data mining, machine learning and statistics to information generated from educational settings. At a high level, the field seeks to develop and improve methods for exploring this data, which often has multiple levels of meaningful hierarchy, in order to discover new insights about how people learn in the context of such settings. In doing so, EDM has contributed to theories of learning investigated by researchers in educational psychology and the learning sciences. The field is closely tied to that of learning analytics, and the two have been compared and contrasted.

User research focuses on understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies. This field of research aims at improving the usability of products, services, or processes by incorporating experimental and observational research methods to guide the design, development, and refinement of a product. User researchers often work alongside designers, engineers, and programmers in all stages of product creation and idealization.

References

  1. ISBN   1558604111
  2. Rockwell, C. 1999. Customer connection creates a winning product: building success with contextual techniques. interactions 6, 1 (Jan. 1999), pp. 50-57.
  3. McDonald, S., Monahan, K., and Cockton, G. 2006. Modified contextual design as a field evaluation method. In Proceedings of the 4th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer interaction: Changing Roles (Oslo, Norway, October 14–18, 2006). A. Mørch, K. Morgan, T. Bratteteig, G. Ghosh, and D. Svanaes, Eds. NordiCHI '06, vol. 189. ACM Press, New York, NY, 437-440.