Contextual inquiry: discovering physicians' true needs.
Gathering user requirements that represent the true needs of the users is a challenge. There are many elicitation methods in use today, but they generally are not successful in identifying a comprehensive set of requirements that reflect the users' true needs. This paper describes the requirements gathering method, Contextual Inquiry, that we used to generate physician requirements for a comprehensive Clinical Information System. We feel that this method has advantages over traditional techniques such as surveys, questionnaires, traditional interviews, and focus groups, in obtaining a more comprehensive analysis of the true needs of the users.
Coble
J M
JM
Section of Medical Informatics, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
Maffitt
J S
JS
Orland
M J
MJ
Kahn
M G
MG
D001292:Attitude to Computers; D006751:Hospital Information Systems; D006801:Humans; D010820:Physicians; D019095:Point-of-Care Systems