3. What is Contextual Inquiry?
Contextual inquiry is a semi-structured interview method to obtain information about the context of use, where users are first asked a set of standard questions and then observed and questioned while they work in their own environments. We can define the contextual knowledge as all the knowledge that is relevant and can be mobilized to understand a given situated decision problem. There are good reasons to use contextual interviewing in your research including: The ability to reveal information and understanding that users might not be aware of. The veracity of information – observing users in their natural environment tends to lead to very accurate information.