Contextual Inquiry

Research on Leslie Nature Center Communicationt

problem

09/2017 – 12/2017 Ann Arbor

Researcher

Merrie Fuller, Jonathan Hartman, Yaojia Hua, Yu Qin

CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY AND CONSULTING

Background

Client Leslie Science & Nature Center
The Leslie Science and Nature Center (LSNC) is a

non-profit organization centered around educating

local youth about the natural environment through

outreach programs with local schools, Boy/Girl scout

programs, summer day camps, public programs, and

a shelter program for non-releasable birds of prey.

Their Hopes

"We want camp families to

look forward to communication…

instead of viewing [communication] as a chore."

- LSNC Staff

Problem They Mentioned

Health Form Completion
Digital Communication
Engagement Integration

The Biggest Problem We Found

When we dig deeper, we found all of the uncertainties happened in their working process is because the staff of Leslie Science and Nature Center is excellent at face to face communication. So excellent that they overly rely on it, and leave digital communication far behind, which make their whole workflow inefficient.

Methodology

Contextual Inquiry & Qualitative Analysis

To approach the information problem posed by LSNC, our group (Team Echo-8) conducted a contextual inquiry. We collected, represented, and analyzed qualitative data about the organization’s work process and service, by interviews, observation, and analysis.

* Conducting semi-structured interviews;
* Observing work processes;
* Processing interview notes into discrete pieces of qualitative data;
* Analyzing qualitative data using affinity walls;

Generating, evaluating, and recommending specific suggestions to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the work process, product, or service;
Effectively communicating findings and recommendations in oral and written form.

Process

1. Client meeting

Scoped the project in the initial clients meeting:
   * Asked their biggest hopes are for the project;
   * Defined three important problems they want to solve;
   * Described the timeline overall;
   * Communicated with interviewee contact information and recruitment details;
   * Asked for relevant documents;
   * Asked their preference for presentation of findings and recommendations.

2. Conduct background research

Conducted research the organization and problem domain to gain knowledge that will inform your interviews and observations and create content that is useful for the client.
   * General background about the problem
   * General background about the client or target population
   * Compare and contrast competitors with your client/target group
   * Scholarly literature review

3. Conduct semi-structured interviews

Recruitment Recruit interviewees through email, friends and client’s customer lists;
Interview Script We prepared our interview scripts with a clear purpose, overreaching questions, and detail questions. See the interview protocol here:

* These questions fit within the scope of our 4 information problems we defined in the client meeting and are customized for the staff and customers of our client;

Interview Interviewed both stakeholders (there) and consumers (one old customer and two potential customers); get recorded for each interview;
Annotated Interview Notes individually Worked with the interview notes taken from /one/interview in which I participated.

4. Interpretation sessions

ASAP after any of our team members conducted an interview, we conduct an interview session.
   * Listen to an audio recording, ask questions, add interpretations
   * Write Affinity “affinity notes” containing a single salient topic, observation, or quote.
   * Record them in sharable Google Docs

5. Observing their work processes

Observed them navigating the camp’s website and attempting to register for a camp.
→ To gain insight into a portion of the camp’s digital communication from the context of an outsider who was totally unfamiliar with the process.
Observed the end-of-camp survey data collected by LSNC.
→ Paid particular attention to the communication-related comments.

6. Data Analysis - Affinity Walls

Once we had obtained our interview and observation data, we converted these into “affinity notes” containing a single salient topic, observation, or quote.

* Create Begin by writing out or printing and pasting/taping each affinity note on a separate yellow sticky note.
* Cluster These affinity notes were grouped with anywhere from 3 to 7 similar notes and given a summary topic, which was in turn grouped with other summary topics into larger groups.
* Profile Add a blue note above each yellow-note cluster, with a one- or two-sentence summary of the notes in the cluster

All grouped together, these findings made up our affinity wall, pictured above. This process allowed us to uncover some of the more general trends, both in the context of our affinity wall and in the discussions surrounding our groupings.

7. Data Visualization

In light of our findings, we also analyzed the camp’s digital communications and mapped the communication flows, which allowed us to itemize additional key points of disruption.