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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

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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.

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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.

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out of context@gilescolborne

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TimeLocationEnvironmentSocialDeviceActivityIndividual

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.

14EyeEm

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.

16Google 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.

17Google 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.

TimeLocationEnvironmentSocialDeviceActivityIndividual

19http://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/4064143718/

But we’re still guessing.

11:37New YorkSubwayAloneBlackberryEmailSarah

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

£2In 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.

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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.

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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 flieslike an arrow.

Fruit flieslike 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 FunkyHomosapian.

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 FunkyHomosapian.

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

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CONTEXT

RELEVANCEInstead, 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.