Contextual Inquiry Definition

Contextual Inquiry – is the research method in the team-based and is the part of methodology of the context team. Contextual inquiry as the method of the research is not about setting the particular task for people. In other words, the users are watched while they are performing their work in their environments instead of being looked up in some lab context. Contextual inquiry is an observational and qualitative research approach from the perspective of a user. It is a kind of cooperation between the user and the researcher to make discussion on the critical aspects.

These environments are normally the context of home, office, or sometime outside the premises. On the other hand, this compares it to other methods that are used to carry out a qualitative research, and it gives a concentration on the identification of the behaviors, the feelings, the motivations, and the reactions of a user or subject in the course of performance of a service, an action, or an activity in the environments where these activities usually take place. Asking them to recollect a process will prompt to light up the parts of it most integral to users, while watching people in action reveals every step in the journey. If these seem unclear, a window is open for the researcher to ask questions, which clarifies what the user is doing.