Let’s say you’re working on an assistant app for teachers. To truly understand how they would use it, you need to see them in the classroom, where they handle many tasks simultaneously and deal with constant interruptions.
Observing them in action can help you spot real challenges, like managing technology while teaching. This approach helps you design a solution that fits their everyday routine.
Studies show that 42% of customers are willing to pay more for a friendlier, more welcoming experience, and companies focusing on customer experience see more engaged employees.
Contextual inquiry gives you valuable insights into creating designs that meet your users’ needs. In this blog post, we’ll explore contextual inquiry, its key steps, and examples to guide you in your own research.
How Contextual Inquiry Can Transform Your UX Research
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat Is Contextual Inquiry?
A contextual inquiry involves observing your application’s users in their natural context to understand their actions and how their thoughts impact those actions.
This hands-on approach will help you witness how people might use your app, identify features folks like, and become more customer-oriented.
Contextual inquiry vs. field study
With a field study, you are in the middle of an emergency room, silently observing how nurses function and trying to understand their day so that you can create an effective app for them using UX design tools. But you don’t interact with them.
With contextual inquiry, you connect with them.
Here’s how contextual inquiry differs from field study.
| Aspect | Contextual inquiry | Field study |
| Interaction level | High; involves active engagement with participants | Low; primarily observational without interruption |
| Data collection | Combines observation with real-time interviews | Focuses on observational data only |
| User role | Users lead the session as subject matter experts | Users are passive subjects being observed |
| Flexibility | Adaptable based on participant responses | Less adaptable; follows a predetermined observation plan |
| Depth of insight | Provides deep insights into user motivations and context | Offers broad insights into user behavior |
Key components of contextual inquiry
The contextual inquiry method lets you observe every aspect of user interaction to understand what matters.
Let’s review the three principles of contextual inquiry.
1. Observation
To get real insights, step into the user’s world—be a fly on the wall in their workspace, at home, or wherever they interact with the product.
Designing a faster scanning system for a barista? Watch for shortcuts, clever workarounds, or the occasional eye roll. Every sigh or glance at their watch is a clue. Jot it all down!
This firsthand observation gives you raw, unfiltered insights into what they do, why they do it, and what drives—or frustrates—them.
2. Inquiry
Now, it’s time to engage with users with a contextual interview.
You’ve got two options:
- Passive inquiry: Let them finish, then ask, “What was going through your head?” This keeps it relaxed and brings out honest insights
- Active inquiry: Jump in mid-task with questions like, “What made you click that?” Perfect for catching those aha! moments
Both approaches give you the why behind their actions.
3. Documentation
It’s time to document your findings! Gather notes, videos, and photos of contextual interviews—even the blurry ones where users look ready to toss their devices.
Every detail counts, from “Oh, I didn’t know that!” moments to frustrated glances.
These insights are your goldmine for spotting patterns and guiding design process decisions. Well-documented findings will support your presentation of what’s working, what’s not, and why to stakeholders.
Where can you implement the components of these research methods? Let’s explore them now!
Examples of contextual inquiry
We discuss two contextual inquiry examples, showcasing how individuals have successfully implemented the technique to show how you can implement it for your specific requirements.
1. Using a contextual inquiry interview to understand customer behavior at Trader Joe’s, one of America’s popular grocery chains
Maggie Lin, a UX designer, says, “To understand customer behavior and priorities at Trader Joe’s, I did two contextual inquiries with Jill and Justin. What I uncovered was eye-opening.
Jill, for instance, always grabs products from the second position on the shelf. Why? She believes the first spot is too “handled” and likely less fresh. If the second choice doesn’t meet her standards, she checks the third spot. Simple yet fascinating.
Though Justin has a shopping list, he checks every aisle to ensure he doesn’t miss anything. It’s about leaving no stone unturned, even if it’s not on the list.
It’s wild how users’ actions reveal things they didn’t even realize themselves — like when you notice your habits while observing others!”
2. Using contextual inquiry to improve SharkNinja’s products
“Consumers might not even know their problems with their existing products.“
Mark Barrocas, president of SharkNinja, a global product design and technology company, shares a story about a customer focus group that threw him for a loop and taught him a game-changing business lesson.
They went and observed how people were using vacuum cleaners in their homes. This helped them redesign and refine their offering. It’s a perfect reminder that sometimes the best insights come from users, not the boardroom. As a product designer, you’ll appreciate how even the most unexpected feedback can reshape your approach.
Also Read: Design Management—Tips, Templates & Tools
Now, let’s understand how to conduct contextual inquiry sessions. We’ll explore that in depth in the following paragraphs.
Summarize this article for me pleaseHow to Conduct Contextual Inquiry
⚡️ Real-World Insight
UX Designer Nikki Anderson-Stanier experimented with various contextual interview methods before finding the most effective one.
Her problem?
The Hawthorne Effect—where people modify their behavior because they know they’re being observed.
During contextual inquiries, participants might perform tasks more carefully or follow procedures more strictly than usual because they’re aware of being watched. This can lead to data that doesn’t fully reflect real-world behaviors.
Let’s now lay the foundation for you to develop your own contextual inquiry approach.
1. Plan the inquiry
You’re going to be observing people in their natural context. This requires a systemic plan!
The first step is understanding your users. Try user persona templates to chart how you think they would collaborate with the insights you gather from the contextual inquiry research methods.
Then, articulate the qualitative research methods you want answered in the contextual inquiry process.
For example, if you’re developing a new tool for educators, your questions could include:
- How do teachers currently manage lesson planning?
- What challenges do they face with the existing systems?
You can also create a feedback form to gather participant inputs for your contextual inquiry.
You can do it all manually or easily with ClickUp while collaborating with other stakeholders. ClickUp is the everything app for work that combines task management, knowledge management, and communication and collaboration tools in one interface to ensure you have all the required information at your fingertips! This helps you work faster and smarter.
With ClickUp Forms, you can easily enable study participants observing users or any other stakeholder to share rich and relevant product feedback and automatically organize action response data.
The ClickUp User Research Plan Template will help you communicate, organize, and execute each phase and gain deep insights into users’ behaviors, needs, and motivations in their natural environment.
With this template, you can:
- Easily discover and categorize the needs and characteristics of your users
- Develop effective research questionnaires to support your research
- Drive data-driven strategies to improve your feature/product/service
The result? You get to focus on delivering top-quality products and solutions that truly meet user expectations.
To execute your plans, schedule interviews and observation sessions and assign tasks to relevant team members using ClickUp Tasks. This will help you manage design projects effectively and create customer-centered systems.
2. Conduct observations
When you start conducting user observations, establish rapport with participants to help them feel at ease. If you don’t know the participant, start by introducing yourself!
Ask basic warm-up questions, like, “How’s your day?” or “What’s your favorite hobby?”. This will give you time to build rapport with the participant and differentiate this from other research methods.
Talk them through your expectations for work practices and what they can expect from you. For example, tell them, “I’ll observe you working naturally and may ask quick questions—just focus on your tasks as if I’m invisible!“
This would help you engage them further. Throughout the observations, you can keep taking detailed notes for valuable insights.
💡Pro Tip: Your notes should include:
- User actions: What specific tasks are they performing? How do they interact with tools or products?
- Environmental context: Note the physical layout, available resources, and relevant social interactions
- Emotional responses: Capture any visible frustrations or satisfaction expressed by the user
With ClickUp Notepad, you can capture your thoughts, ideas, notes, and tasks related to the interviews on the fly. Did a participant’s quick action spark an idea for a potential feature? Jot it down instantly in your Notepad.
Organize these insights into actionable tasks, like “Implementing researcher observations,” and keep them accessible from anywhere, ensuring no valuable detail slips through the cracks.
To keep your research organized and on schedule, use the ClickUp Calendar View and track important dates. Whether you’re planning one-on-one observations or setting reminders for follow-up interviews, the calendar’s customizable views and drag-and-drop capabilities let you schedule sessions easily.
3. Conduct inquiry
Once you’ve conducted preliminary user observations, it’s time to dig deeper and conduct an inquiry session. Ask quick, open-ended questions to clarify what you’re seeing.
If they’re wrestling with a feature, ask, “What’s the goal here?” or “How do you normally use this?”
For instance, investigate if someone constantly taps around before finding the right button. “Is there something you’re looking for specifically?”
Keep it conversational, encourage them to ask follow-up questions, and be ready to adapt if they mention something unexpected. And don’t hesitate to snap photos or videos (with permission) to capture nuances that notes might miss.
This flexible, real-time inquiry gives you raw, honest insights that no script can predict, defining customer-centered systems.
The ClickUp User Studies Template offers a structured approach to gathering and organizing user feedback and recommending actionable changes.
The template will:
- Save you time by providing structure
- Make it easier for you to capture and analyze user data
- Help you make data-driven, informed decisions about design and product changes
- Ensure consistency in results across multiple studies
Use it to analyze user experiences in detail, validate findings, and prioritize enhancements that can make your application or website more intuitive, responsive, and user-friendly.
💡Pro Tip: Wrap up with a quick rundown of what you’ve learned and ask if they want to share anything else. You’d be surprised how often the best contextual design insights sneak in at the end!
4. Document, organize, and analyze data
After each session, organize your notes into categories such as ‘researcher observes’ based on themes or specific research objectives.
This could include:
- User needs
- Pain points
- Workflows
- Environmental factors
You can use ClickUp Docs to organize and review all your insights and information for recurring contextual design patterns:
- Similar behaviors or challenges faced by multiple users
- Common environmental factors that influence user actions
- Insights into user motivations based on their comments during the inquiry
For example, one of your team members could conduct a contextual design with another person. You could add your notes to this centralized document and review them later.
Involve team members or stakeholders in the analysis process to further shared understanding and gain diverse perspectives on the research method findings.
Group discussions can help validate interpretations of user interviews and uncover additional insights for effective UX strategy.
The best part? ClickUp’s Instant and Live Collaboration feature notifies team members when others edit the same document. It helps prevent conflicts and ensures smooth, real-time collaboration.
5. Review and refine
Use the insights gained in contextual inquiry to refine the contextual design process, concepts, prototypes, and ideas.
This makes it essential to continuously conduct usability testing with users throughout each iteration of the contextual inquiry design process, ensuring that design choices are validated and aligned with real-world use.
The ClickUp Design Project Management Software provides a user-centered approach that emphasizes understanding users’ tasks and environments to create products that fit their needs and workflows seamlessly.
Next, create a cohesive report highlighting the analysis’s major observations, user behaviors, challenges, and insights. With ClickUp Dashboards, you can transform all the insights gathered so far into rich, informative charts and graphs.
If you want to understand how many people have requested a particular feature in your sessions, you can ask AI questions, and ClickUp Brain will search the data on the relevant dashboards in your workspace to provide quick, in-depth insights.
Summarize this article for me pleaseBenefits of Contextual Inquiry
We now know that contextual inquiry is a powerful tool for uncovering deep user insights by observing and interacting with users in their natural environment. Here’s why it’s so valuable:
- It fosters a two-way dialogue, allowing you to sync up with users and create workflows that work for them and the business
- You can make smarter design choices that cut down on guesswork by grounding decisions in real user behavior
- You get a true sense of how users behave in their natural environment, not just in controlled settings
- It helps identify factors like physical, cultural, or tech barriers that you might otherwise overlook while designing the UX
💡 Pro Tip: To maximize the impact of contextual inquiry, consider using a contextual inquiry toolkit. This can include a checklist for observation, frequently asked interview questions, and a field notebook to record your findings.
Summarize this article for me pleaseChallenges During Contextual Inquiries
While contextual inquiries offer valuable insights, they also come with unique challenges. Here are some of the key hurdles you may face:
- Transforming raw data into actionable insights will require a lot of creativity and systematic thinking
- You might encounter information beyond structured processes; personal anecdotes and unexpected insights may not fit into predefined categories
- Your expectations, opinions, or prejudices might influence or bias what you perceive or record in a study
- You might find more than one person in your session at a time because they assume it would lead to more feedback
Summarize this article for me pleaseContextual Inquiry Puts Users at the Forefront
Contextual inquiry is a powerful tool for bridging the gap between users and designers.
Hansjan Kamerling, Product Manager and co-founder at Adaptify AI, says,
To do that, a tool like ClickUp will certainly help—with features like forms to gather user feedback, dashboards to track improvements based on contextual inquiry, and docs to record all the test observations from start to finish.
Ready to make user research easier? Sign up for ClickUp today to improve your user-centered design approach.
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