1. cxpartners 1
Always design a thing by considering
it in its next larger context –
a chair in a room,
a house in an environment,
an environment in a city plan
Eliel Saarinen

2. 2
This is a minimalist movie poster.
You know the movie – but you
may not realise it.
http://reramble.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/20-posters-for-disney-classics/

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With a little, uh, context, you can
quickly figure out it’s Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs.
http://reramble.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/20-posters-for-disney-classics/

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So now you can guess what this
is...
http://reramble.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/20-posters-for-disney-classics/

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And this one
http://reramble.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/20-posters-for-disney-classics/

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And even this one. Context
allows us to communicate in
ways that are elegant, simple and
efficient.
http://reramble.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/20-posters-for-disney-classics/

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Those are the qualities we need
when we’re designing for the
devices people use these days.

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I want my phone to
contextually decide when
to notify me.
When I’m asleep (it’s dark,
phone stationary, quiet)
then it won’t buzz.
But if it’s important then it
should still alert me.
A real person told me this
Users expect us to use
context to help them do
things with less fuss.
Though their
expectations of what’s
possible seem
unreasonably high.

9. 9
Here is exactly
what you need
right now.
OK
Something like this. It’s the end
of user interface design. And it’s
context wot dun it.

10. cxpartners 10
out of context
@gilescolborne

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Time
Location
Environment
Social
Device
Activity
Individual
http://thenounproject.com/noun/computer/#icon-No115http://thenounproject.com/noun/iphone/#icon-No414
This is a pretty typical model of
context. A person in a context.
The device reads the context and
returns the right options. You’ll
have seen many versions of this.
In this model, people seek to
categorise different types of
context.

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Google uses social context to
make a guess about where you
work. It turns typing into a yes /
no click. Spooky but efficient.

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My computer remembers my task
context. When I restart, it opens
up my applications and web
pages as I left them.

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EyeEm
This app uses Geofencing to add
a status to my photos.
Unfortunately, it’s made a wrong
guess. I wasn’t at that coffee
shop – I was next door getting a
haircut. It’s frustrating when apps
get context wrong and we have
to correct them.

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You can teach your devices about
your temporal (time) context. For
instance by setting ‘Do not
disturb’ so that you’re not woken
by notifications during the night.
Which is fine – but when you
miss that one urgent call, you lose
trust in this feature. It doesn’t
know what’s important.

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Google Maps
Google Maps aims to read my
emotional context – if I shake the
phone, it knows I’m cross and
asks for my feedback.
But this just annoys me. I shake
the phone because I’m walking.
This feature obscures the maps
that want to see.

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Google Now
Google Now does a good job
because it gradually learns about
me and adds more information to
it’s picture of my context.
So it knows when I’m probably
about to leave the office and
gives me travel warnings for the
journey home.
Time and Location.
This model helps us describe our
predictions – but they’re really
just guesses and they’re often
wrong.
We can improve the guesses by
combining more than one type of
input.

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Of course this raises privacy
concerns. If you’re going to deal
in context, you need to
demonstrate yourself to be
trustworthy. You have to earn
that trust over time. You can lose
it very quickly, too.

19. Time
Location
Environment
Social
Device
Activity
Individual
19http://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/4064143718/
But we’re still guessing.

20. 11:37
New York
Subway
Alone
Blackberry
Email
Sarah
20http://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/4064143718/
You can know all this stuff, but it
doesn’t really answer the
question: what does she want to
do next.

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Paul Dourish
Paul Dourish points out that
context is inherantly uncertain
and unknowable.
Instead of trying to measure
context, he says we need ways
for people and their devices to
maintain a shared understanding
of context.

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PsychologyForDesigners.com
£2
In other words: the key to
context is conversation. There’s
plenty of psychological research
into conversation. This book by
my colleague Joe Leech shows
you how to make use of it. You
should buy a copy.

23. 23cxpartners
Here’s a story about a
conversation with a computer.
Joe was cycling to work listening
to music – no screens, but Siri is
available.

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What’s this playing?
It was on random play so he
asked what he was listening to.

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Siri couldn’t figure out what he
meant. So it did something else.

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Not helpful.

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What’s this playing?
Here’s what most of us would
have expected to happen:

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Siri can answer
‘What song is playing’ but not
‘What is this playing?’
Siri has no sense of context.

29. cxpartners 29
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0Z1QGpTZSo
On the other hand, people are
very good at figuring out topics
even when they’re not mentioned
in a conversation. So it doesn’t
take us long to figure out what
Pete and Dud are talking about
here.

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Time flies
like an arrow.
Fruit flies
like a banana.
Unlike computers, we’re great at
dealing with ambiguity – so good
that we play games with it.

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What’s this playing?
What was that?
A bit of you know what.
We shorten speech by using pronouns or
decorate it will allusions. To understand
it, you have to understand context. If we
can understand how, then we’ll be better
able to design for context.

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What’s this playing?
Clarke and Brennan came up with
the theory of grounding or
common ground in
conversations.

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What’s this playing? This?
It’s the process by which
participants find agreement on
the topic of conversation.

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On the iPod.
What’s this playing? This?

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On the iPod.
What’s this playing? This?
It’s Del the Funky
Homosapian.
This
Or, put another way, agreeing
what this is.

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Google Now is getting better at
common ground. If you ask it a
question...

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…and then follow up with another
using a pronoun, it will remember
the common ground.
So to deal with context, we need
to remember topics across
interactions.

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On the iPod.
What’s this playing? This?
It’s Del the Funky
Homosapian.
This
Time Pressure / Error / Shared Knowledge
One key idea is that people seek ‘least
collaborative effort in finding common
ground.
The approach they use depends on time
pressure, the risk of error, and their
assumptions about shared knowledge.
Rather than annoying computers asking for
clarification all the time, people seek to find
the most efficient way to reach agreement.
We can use this to build better
conversations.

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What’s this playing? This?
Another method, Conversational
Analysis (CA) points out the
importance of Repair events in
conversation – that’s when one
party clarifies the conversation.

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Here’s Siri noticing an ambiguity
and asking for clarification.
The user has set a reminder for
‘tomorrow’ but it’s just after
midnight. So do they mean ‘in the
morning’ or ‘the next day’?
Repair events are important.

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Here’s Google noticing that an
email contains a link to a Google
Drive document that the user
doesn’t have permission to view.
Again, it looks for clarification.

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Fantastical for Mac lets you
create events in something like
natural langauge. As you do so,
you can see Fantstical continually
modifying its undertstanding of
the entry – like someone nodding
as you’re talking. You can also
step in and make changes.
Fantastical’s writers understood
their software isn’t perfect and
created a very human interface to
deal with that.

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I want my phone to
contextually decide when
to notify me.
When I’m asleep (it’s dark,
phone stationary, quiet)
then it won’t buzz.
But if it’s important then it
should still alert me.
A real user told me this
So can we fix this problem?
Really it’s not the phone that has
the answer.

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Call: Susan Hunter
mobile
Jim Hunter came up with this
idea. When you call someone
who’s got an appointment on her
calendar...

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Call: Susan Hunter
mobile
Her phone says:
Do not disturb ends 14:00
Cancel Proceed
Your phone should warn you and
give you the chance to override.

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Call: Susan Hunter
mobile
Her phone says:
Do not disturb ends 14:00
Cancel Proceed
If your call is urgent (like a taxi
waiting outside) then you know
to proceed. If not, no need to
interrupt. In other words, we
need to facilitate the kinds of
contextual decision making that
we use when we go over to
someone’s desk.

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In that case...
Are you busy? No.
In conversational analysis, these
are called pre-sequences. They
help establish the context for a
conversation.

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Providing additional information
can also help establish context. In
Apple’s ‘Find my iPod’ you can
see how much battery is left on
the device – which establishes a
sense of urgency. How often do
we use additional information to
distract instead of augment?

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CONTEXT
What we’re seeing is that trying
to establish context isn’t really
the right problem.

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CONTEXT
RELEVANCE
Instead, we should be seeking to
find out what’s relevant (to this
user at this moment in time).

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Wait, what was all that?
If you must measure context – use multiple sources
Repair and negotiate – never assume you’re right
Use least collaborative effort – time, error, shared knowledge
Keep track of what this is – remember across interactions
Allow users to negotiate context between themselves, too
Use pre-sequences to set up interactions
Extra information should enrich context – don’t distract
What really matters is relevance – focus on that
But now we have some rules to help us.

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PsychologyForDesigners.com
Thanks to @mrjoe, the other folks at
@cxpartners and Little Big Details
for examples.