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.

Autorentext
Hugh Beyer is a co-founder of InContext Enterprises, Inc., a firm that works with companies, coaching teams to design products, product strategies, and information systems from customer data. Hugh Beyer has pioneered the link between the customer-centered front end and object-oriented design. Karen Holtzblatt is a co-founder of InContext Enterprises, Inc., a firm that works with companies, coaching teams to design products, product strategies, and information systems from customer data. Karen Holtzblatt developed the Contextual Inquiry field data gathering technique that forms the core of Contextual Design and is now taught and used world-wide.

Klappentext
Contextual design is a state-of-the-art approach to designing products directly from an understanding of how the customer works and what the customer needs. Based on a method developed and taught by the authors, this is a practical, hands-on guide that articulates the underlying principles of contextual design and shows how to use them to address different problems, constraints, and organizational situations.

Zusammenfassung
"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

Inhalt
Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Gathering Customer Data Chapter 3 Principles of Contextual Inquiry Chapter 4 Contextual Inquiry in Practice Chapter 5 A Language of Work Chapter 6 Work Models Chapter 7 The Interpretation Session Chapter 8 Consolidation Chapter 9 Creating One View of the Customer Chapter 10 Communicating to the Organization Chapter 11 Work Redesign Chapter 12 Using Data to Drive Design Chapter 13 Design from Data Chapter 14 System Design Chapter 15 The User Environment Design Chapter 16 Project Planning and Strategy Chapter 17 Prototyping as a Design Tool Chapter 18 From Structure to User Interface Chapter 19 Iterating with a Prototype Chapter 20 Putting It into Practice