Working with a team of four, I led a Contextual Design process in order to evaluate a system that is in use by an International Construction Equipment Manufacturer.

This work was presented at Agile 2008 in Toronto, Canada. You can have a look at the presentation (PPT, 42mb), or read the conference paper (PDF).

What did I do?

The project began with a series of Contextual Inquiries at locations across the US. Our research involved sitting in the cubicles of internal business users in order to directly understand whether their needs for the system were being met. This research was designed in such a way that our participants were able to carry out their normal workload, and we were able to get a realistic glimpse into how the software was being used. Based on the findings in the sessions, we recommended many new enhancements to the currently-used system and business process. Many of these findings and enhancements surprised the business because they had never carried out user research before. Our user-centered process offered numerous insights into true user needs.

After being asked to build a proof-of-concept of the ideas we put forth, I worked with a small development team to build a new version of the tool. In that role I was the lead UI developer, working with CSS, XHTML, and Javascript.