Clarifies the line between theory and practice!

books:


	• Rapid Contextual Design: A How-to Guide to Key Techniques for User-Centered Design (Interactive Technologies) Karen Holtzblatt, Jessamyn Burns Wendell, ... Morgan Kaufmann, 2004 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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Clarifies the line between theory and practice!

If you are looking for an elegant, academic theory to suggest how contextual design might work in some controlled laboratory experiment-- this is not the book for you. This work gives step-by-step procedures on how to conduct contextual design in the real, uncontrolled world of people's lives, and how to do this work on an accelerated time schedule.

This is a clear tutorial and worthy "field manual" on contextual design, task sequence modeling, affinity diagrams, and paper prototyping for applied work in the real world.

Because it takes you through each activity step-by-step, this book does name the tools used at the time this work was crafted. Some reviewers consider that blatant advertising-- and in the case of citations for "CDTools" perhaps that's true. But in most cases it is very helpful to know that some specific products are more field-worthy than others. I strongly doubt these authors have any financial interest in boosting sales of 3M Post-It notes. (Though Amazon may profit from sales of 3M - 2051-FLT - 3M Post-it Bright Colors Memo Cube)

:-)

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Is it impossible to schedule enough time to include users in your design process? Is it difficult to incorporate elaborate user-centered design techniques into your own standard design practices? Do the resources needed seem overwhelming?

This handbook introduces Rapid CD, a fast-paced, adaptive form of Contextual Design. Rapid CD is a hands-on guide for anyone who needs practical guidance on how to use the Contextual Design process and adapt it to tactical projects with tight timelines and resources.

Rapid Contextual Design provides detailed suggestions on structuring the project and customer interviews, conducting interviews, and running interpretation sessions. The handbook walks you step-by-step through organizing the data so you can see your key issues, along with visioning new solutions, storyboarding to work out the details, and paper prototype interviewing to iterate the design-all with as little as a two-person team with only a few weeks to spare!

*Includes real project examples with actual customer data that illustrate how a CD project actually works.
*Covers the entire scope of a project, from deciding on the number and type of interviews, to interview set up and analyzing collected data. Sample project schedules are also included for a variety of different types of projects.
*Provides examples of how-to write affinity notes and affinity labels, build an affinity diagram, and step-by-step instructions for consolidating sequence models.
*Shows how to use consolidated data to define a design within tight time frames with examples of visions, storyboards, and paper prototypes.
*Introduces CDToolsT, the first application designed to support customer-centered design.

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