Completed a site visit for a customer in Hong Kong and it was extremely valuable. As with Usability Testing, setting objectives and preparing the right investigation questions was very important. I am hoping we get more opportunity to conduct more site visits in the future :)

While we do not always get a chance to do this, we try and conduct some small amount of analysis or user research when we get access to the real customers. Even if this means slotting in some questionning before a Usability Testing session.

Posted by: Daniel Szuc on August 9, 2003 04:33 AM

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File this article under, "Duh."

Contextual Inquiry (or field study if you want an ethnography term) is completely important to developing a user profile and current task analysis. Like being able to photocopy all the posit-it notes on the monitors of your users because that's what they use to get through the system. You won't know about little stuff like that unless you go.

Getting the company you work for to send you is the hard part. Spool's article is beginner stuff. Not that there aren't a lot of beginners out there, but perhaps some content could come from UIE instead of pontifications written because "we need an article for the site."

Posted by: fajalar on August 11, 2003 11:25 AM

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So Spool is pontificating - again.

What else is new? His research is usually "valuable" only to people just entering the field where they see everything with wide-eyed wonder.

Posted by: on August 12, 2003 10:12 AM

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