Applying Contextual Inquiry to Housework

Many years ago, I was a software designer. As part of my job, I took several seminars from Karen Holtzblatt and Hugh Beyer, two important figures in the field of contextual inquiry, a method of watching a number of people perform certain tasks, compiling the data about how they perform these tasks, and then analyzing the data to determine if any patterns stand out. I worked on one project where Karen and Hugh guided us through shadowing a series of prospective customers of our accounting software as they went through a typical day of accounting and bookkeeping tasks.

They had a mantra for keeping the team on track as we compiled and analyzed the data. If someone had an idea that fell into a later stage of the project (for example, as we were compiling the data, someone might make a comment that was really more analytic in nature) they had us make a note of the comment so it wasn't forgotten, but then continue on with the current step of the project. The process was different, however, if someone remembered something that we had forgotten to take care of during an earlier step of the project. (For example, finding a note during the analytic stage that said that someone always washed their hands after handling the copier toner. That sort of information should more properly be recorded in the data compilation stage.) In that case we would then stop the current stage we were at, go back to the earlier step, add the new information and then continue back through the process until we were caught up to see if this new bit of information changed the outcome of any of the later steps.

I've been amazed at how frequently this process has been useful for keeping me on track throughout my life. Ideas for projects that I have while working on something else get written down in a notebook so they aren't forgotten and I continue on with my current project. Things that I have forgotten to take care of get taken care of immediately so they don't keep nagging at me and continue to get further and further behind.

Just today, I was vaccuming the downstairs of my house, a job I try to do every Saturday morning. I had finished the den and had moved on to the living when I looked behind me to see in the middle of the den a huge pile of black cat hair. I had missed a spot! What to do? Stop the might momentum I had going in the living room and backtrack to the den to take care of the one spot? Keep on with the rest of the down stairs while repeating to myself over and over, "Don't forget to go back and do the den. Don't forget to go back and do the den." Neither option was appealing. In the end, I went with the old stand by and went back, took care of the spot and continued back until I caught up with where I had been before. Who knows? If I had kept going, some other pet or child might have walked through the clot of cat hair and dragged it all over the carpet, causing me to have to redo much more vacuuming than I had to redo originally or I could have forgotten about it only to keep looking at it all week long having it mock me because it was too small to go to all the trouble of getting the vacuum cleaner out just for that. Or, just as likely, I would have remembered to go back and get it when I was done with everything else. But isn't life to short to spend 5 or 10 minutes of your time thinking "Don't forget to go back and do the den." over and over?

Oh, and there are two other pieces of advice that I just know Karen and Hugh would have worked in to their lectures if they could have.

1. You will be paid back 1,000 times over in the time you save if you invest 2.95 in an extension cord that you keep plugged into your vacuuum cleaner at all times. This is scientifically proven.


2. The first time you use a lightweight stick vac to vacuum your hard wood floors or to vacuum your carpeted stairs instead of sweeping or using your heavy regular vacuuum, you will weep with regret for all the years you have gone without this wonderful little tool in your life.(I prefer the Hoover S2220 Flair Bagless Upright Stick Vacuum with Power Nozzle with an added extension cord, of course.) If you have been trying to rely on the useless vacuum attachments "husband" or "children" to help out with the vacuuming chores, you will cry twice as hard at the stick vac's reliability and uncomplaining service.
   And now off to combine quantum physics with laundry stain removal.

A Proper Way to Honer William Wordsworth

The poet William Wordsworth is being honored by Cumbria Tourism, part of the Lake District in England where he was born. In keeping with the stiff upper lip, properly dignified English way of honoring important personages, they came up with the obvious choice: a rapping squirral named mc-nuts rapping Wordsworth's poem Daffodills. The shocker? It's pretty good. Check it out below:



For the only vaguely related reasons that the video below also features the lovely countryside of Northern Great Britain and it made me actually laugh out loud while sitting alone at my computer (yes! I lol'd!), I offer this video for your additional enjoyment:

Don Imus and His Way with Women

I hesitate to add one more piece to the approximately 16,000 other blog posts regarding Don Imus' remarks concerning the Rutger's University Women's BasketBall Team. I'll quickly recap the salient points below:

IMUS: That's some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and --

McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos.

IMUS: That's some nappy-headed hos there. I'm gonna tell you that now, man, that's some -- woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like -- kinda like -- I don't know.

McGUIRK: A Spike Lee thing.

...ROSENBERG: It was a tough watch. The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the Toronto Raptors.

As I've read about and watched all the coverage given to these remarks, I've been wondering what Jill Carroll must be thinking. Jill, I'm sure you'll recall, was held captive in Iraq for almost 3 months before she was released. After her release, she gave an interview to Iraqi television praising her kidnappers as good men. Later it was revealed that she gave this interview as a condition of her release and because she feared she would be killed if she refused.

But that's not a good enough reason for Don Imus' morning crew! Let's check out their comments regarding Ms. Carroll (via Think Progress):

MCGUIRK: She strikes me as the kind of woman who would wear one of those suicide vests. You know, walk into the, try and sneak into the Green Zone.

IMUS: Oh, no. No, no, no, no.

MCCORD: Just because she always appears in traditional Arab garb and wearing a burka.

MCGUIRK: Yeah, what’s with the head gear? Take it off. Let’s see.

IMUS: No, no. This is not –

MCCORD: That’s why the Arab world called for her to be released, because, you know, she defended Iraqis. She was against the war in Iraq and, I wouldn’t be surprised if —

IMUS: Well, so are we. So am I!

MCCORD: Exactly. She cooked with them, lived with them.

IMUS: This is not helping.

MCGUIRK: She may be carrying Habib’s baby at this point.

[laughter]

IMUS: Shut up! I’m begging you to shut up. Both of you. I’m going to murder both of you.

MCCORD: Just because she slept with them doesn’t mean she slept in the manner he’s talking about.

MCGUIRK: Something stinks.

There's more at Think Progress including a video of the whole thing. In his defense, this time Imus seems to be trying to rein in his cohorts. I guess their bad behavior rubbed off on him rather than the othe way around. At any rate, since he's giving out apologies any place he can, I think somebody owes Jill Carroll one.