The Context CUEs Framework in Field Studies

Distributed Cognition and User Experience 

In the 1998 article called “The Extended Mind,” philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers wrote about the active role of the environment in cognitive processes. The idea that “cognitive processes ain’t (all) in the head!” has become foundational for the distributed cognition theory (DCog). The critical point of that theory is that thinking is not confined to the limits of one person and their brain but occurs when people interact with each other and with material artifacts. 

DCog has been successfully used to explain how complex systems of people and technology work together. For example, the distributed-cognition approach was applied to examine the design of ship-navigation systems, air-traffic–control rooms, and shared-database systems. One of the most well-known examples is Ed Hutchins’s work on commercial-airplane cockpits. He showed that to understand what happens in a cockpit, one needs to look at both the rules and instructions, the layout of the space, and the communication among people in the air and on the ground. For instance, Hutchins observed how pilots relied on external scaffolding: distinct interface design with buttons of different shapes and sizes, pieces of paper, and “speed bugs” — physical markers on speed indicators that correspond to specific speed targets for takeoff, landing, and maneuvers. 

Commercial-aircraft cockpit 

Aerosavvy.com: Image of the plane's speed indicator with small markers called speed “bugs” (red and white in the image) that pilots set before takeoff and landing to remind themselves of the maneuvers they are supposed to do as the plane reaches different speeds

Context CUEs in UX: A Framework for Observations and Analysis

Field studies aim to study how a group or individual functions in their natural environment while doing an activity of interest (e.g., interacting with a product).

When conducting field studies, UX professionals face an avalanche of data that must be observed, recorded, and analyzed. DCog can help decide what needs to be captured so data can be easily clustered later during the analysis. 

One way to apply DCog is through the context CUEs framework, which helps to guide the collection of the complex qualitative data by parsing it into three categories: the culture, the unspoken (e.g., practices and assumptions), and the environment (CUE). Each of those categories serves as a prompt to observe users in the field and take holistic notes about the context of use. Below we explain what each letter stands for:

C — Culture: These are observations that reveal a shared implicit and explicit set of behaviors, beliefs, concepts, rules, and values of a particular social, ethnic, or age group. Questions to ask oneself when probing for culture: 

• What and how do users do <X>?
• When do users reach out to others? 
• Why do they do <X>? 
• How do they explain <X>?  

Where X is the phenomenon you are interested to understand.

U — The Unspoken: These are observations of practices and assumptions rooted in tacit knowledge about how the group or product functions. Questions to ask oneself when probing for the unspoken: 

• When was the last conflict in the group, and how was it mitigated? 
• What language one can or cannot use?
• What are the questions new group members or new users ask and do not have a resource to go to?
• What happens when a group member leaves? 
• Are there any issues involving access to necessary information (e.g., files, daily tasks)?

E — Environment: These are observations related to the material, social, and online surroundings of the user or of the group of interest. Questions to ask oneself when recording the environment: 

• Where are we? 
• How does it look, smell, and feel?
• Is this the only space where <X> happens?
•  How accessible is this place?

Context CUEs are all around us in our daily lives. For instance, the many variations of restaurant etiquette around the globe make for a great example of how culture, unspoken rules, and the environment come together. Thankfully, in restaurants, written signs, waiters’ instructions, or the behaviors of other customers often help us navigate the space.  

How people behave in a restaurant is the product of previous experiences, written and unwritten rules, explicit instructions, other customers’ behaviors, and the affordances of the environment.

To summarize, the context CUEs framework serves as a reminder to look for cues in the field. We want to ensure that we stay attuned to how people reduce their cognitive load by interacting with others, using external memory, or creating scaffolding in their physical environment. There is no preset mandatory list of all aspects of culture, unspoken habits, and environment that one needs to use all the time. The variation comes from the specific research question of your study. 

Example: UX Professionals’ Daily Lives

Suppose we want to conduct a contextual inquiry about the daily lives of UX practitioners to understand the challenges they face, as well as the similarities and differences in their work practices across multiple disciplines, industries, and products. In that case, we can plan to divide our observations around the following aspects of distributed cognition:

• Culture:
  • Demographic of the group, languages, and education levels
  • Communication channels used by the group (Slack, email, texting) 
  • Team structure and hierarchy
  • Holidays and celebrations
• The unspoken:
  • Tacit knowledge of tools used by the group (e.g., Miro, Figma, roadmaps, wireframes, laptop)
  • Skills and know-hows (e.g., presenting to stakeholders, notetaking)
  • Jargon and abbreviations (e.g., Agile, UX, KPI, IA)
• Environment:
  • Space where daily activities happen (e.g., laptop, remote meeting, whiteboard, office, home)

You might notice that something like a laptop could be both the tool and the environment, especially if we look at remote workers. It is fine to have overlapping categories.

Contextual Cues Lead to New Opportunities 

Good designs minimize cognitive load to maximize usability. As UX professionals, we want to create products that allow users to offload some of the task demands on external processes and artifacts — that is, products that facilitate and scaffold external thinking. 

Context-based observations are fodder for product improvements and opportunities. If you notice that people always refer to a physical address book to enter information in a form, you can provide them with an online directory so they can directly access that information. 

Or, if you notice that people go through the trouble of scanning a physical business card and then adding it to their list of contacts on their phone, you can, as LinkedIn did, simply provide them with the opportunity to exchange contact information via Bluetooth or by scanning a QR code.

A LinkedIn user can scan someone else’s LinkedIn QR code to connect with that person without relying on memory, business cards, or address books.

Conclusion

Field studies provide rich data that might seem overwhelming and hard to capture consistently. One way to facilitate observations is to use the context CUEs framework, which is rooted in the DCog approach. It provides three broad categories of context cues (culture, the unspoken, and the environment) that nudge practitioners to account for the complex interactions and interdependencies among people, space, and artifacts. By taking note of the dimensions of distributed cognition during a field study, we expose information flows, walkarounds, limitations, and user pain points. These details about how users behave in their natural environment can uncover opportunities for improving the overall user experience of our products. 

References

John Martin Carroll. 2003. HCI models, theories, and Frameworks: Toward a multidisciplinary science, Amsterdam: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

Andy Clark, David Chalmers. "The extended mind." Analysis 58.1 (1998): 7-19.

James Hollan, Edwin Hutchins, and David Kirsh. 2000. Distributed cognition. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 7, 2 (2000), 174–196. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/353485.353487 

Edwin Hutchins. "How a cockpit remembers its speeds." Cognitive science 19.3 (1995): 265-288.