Contextual Interviews

• What is a contextual interview?
• What can you learn from a contextual interview?
• How do you conduct a contextual interview?
• How do contextual interviews differ from a usability tests?

What is a contextual interview?

Contextual interviews are like usability tests because you watch and listen as users work.

They differ from usability tests because:

• you go to the user
• you watch and listen as the user does his or her own work

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What can you learn from a contextual interview?

Seeing the user's environment can be very useful. By going to the user, you see the user's environment and the actual technology the user works with.

You can answer questions like these:

• What is the social environment like?
• Are there people around to help the user?
• What is the physical environment like?
• Is the user on broadband or on a modem?
• Does being online tie up a phone line so the user wants to be on and off the Web quickly?

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How do you conduct a contextual interview?

Contextual interviews are natural and realistic. They are also usually quite informal.

In a contextual interview, you watch and listen as the user does his or her own work. You don't usually impose tasks or scenarios on the user. The observer listens to the user but may also ask clarifying questions and probe to gain greater understanding of what the user is doing and thinking. The results are usually qualitative rather than quantitative.

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How do contextual interviews differ from a usability test?

In a usability test, you usually have all users do the same scenarios, which gives you comparative data from several people trying the same thing.

You can also combine contextual interviewing and usability testing:

• During a contextual interview, take scenarios along and combine watching users do their own work in their environments with asking them to try a few of your tasks.
• During a usability test, interview users to find out the sorts of questions, issues, tasks they would do with the site. Let the users do their own tasks. Also have the users do some of your tasks to get data on tasks from all the users.

Usability testing in Web site development today is often informal and is often conducted much like a contextual interview. However, usability testing can range from informal and qualitative to quite formal and quantitative. For more about usability testing, see Learn About Usability Testing.

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Next steps

You should use the information gathered from the contextual interview to supplement the other types of data you collect when you learn about your users.

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