The main stakeholders in our design would be people living in low-income neighborhoods that are undergoing the process of gentrification, but anyone wanting to know more about their community could get involved. Potential candidates for our contextual inquiry are professors of sociological and ethnographic studies, and members of the Center for Learning in Action (CLiA), however our main focus is on people who actually live in these neighborhoods as they are the target users. Professors are largely considered by society extremely legitimate sources of information. Observing how their research is completed and how they build narratives around certain data points as an explaination for or reaction to an event is very similar to the tasks we want to make easier for our target base. It is a skill that many people spend years and years cultivating and developing. Our goal is ultimately trying to bring this ability to gather and organize information, somewhat like a professor, around one’s community. Also, we feel like the volunteers and employees at CLiA might have some form of expertise on this subject, as much of their work revolves around community outreach. While we aren’t sure who, specifically, we’d like to be in touch with, we feel like it might be useful to shadow a program with similar goals to ours if one exists.
Dutring the contextual inquires with professors we can look at the type of information they aim for and how that information helps them to create their narrative. Also depending on the material they are preparing exactly we can glean information about how they are speaking to their audience and what audience they are speaking to. If they are writing a book about a movement, we can inquire on how they choose to express their thesis versus a talk about or for that same movement. Also helpful would be a look into their sources and how they decide to use a source. While there might not be direct overlap it can help find us find sources for the service that we are designing. Overall the goal is to understand how an expert in their field does their research.
The contextual inquiries with CLiA employees could take place in their offices or in the field, depending on who we are able to meet with and what they would feel comfortable doing. If the meeting were to happen in an office space, we might ask them to walk us through the process of engaging in various community outreach programs, asking questions where appropriate throughout. If we are able to we can shadow someone working in a program that addresses the same kinds of problems we are trying to address. This is prefered as it would allow for more interaction with the communities that would make up our target user base.
A contextual inquiry might not give us the best information. We might consider retrospective interviews with people who have lived in low income areas who are now in Williamstown or semi-structured interviews over the phone with people currently living in low-income neighbourhoods in areas experiencing gentrification.