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Field Studies vs. Ethnographic Studies vs. Contextual Inquiry

Summary: What is the difference between a field study, an ethnographic study, and a contextual inquiry in a user experience design project? Not much. The main difference is that between field methods and lab-based user research.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULrHIFkwDqM

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Contextual Inquiry: Inspire Design by Observing and Interviewing Users in Their Context

Through observation and collaborative interpretation, contextual inquiry uncovers hidden insights about customer’s work that may not be available through other research methods.

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Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D., is a User Advocate and principal of the Nielsen Norman Group which he co-founded with Dr. Donald A. Norman (former VP of research at Apple Computer). Dr. Nielsen established the "discount usability engineering" movement for fast and cheap improvements of user interfaces and has invented several usability methods, including heuristic evaluation. He holds 79 United States patents, mainly on ways of making the Internet easier to use.

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