Contextual Inquiry in India: Recruit, Access and Field Days

A contextual inquiry combines in-depth observation and interviews with a small sample of users, in their own setting, to understand how they really work. Ethnography needs complete immersion in a person's or group's setting for a sustained period. It looks at social situations and at how people think a thing works (mental models) too. "Field study" is the umbrella term for both (Nielsen Norman Group, January 2024).

It is not an interview that happens to be held in someone's home. You watch the task first. You interrupt with an open question when an action is unclear. At the end you summarise what you think you saw, so the participant can correct you (Nielsen Norman Group, December 2020).

GOV.UK says not to plan more than two three-hour or four one-hour visits in a day. We assume that limit applies to one pair of researchers. Sessions run between 1 and 3 hours, and the work goes better in pairs. One person leads the visit and the other takes notes, photos and recordings (GOV.UK Service Manual, 2017). Sessions on long processes can run from an hour to several days (Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, GOV.UK, 2021).

Our recommendation for sample size is 4 to 6 households per segment, where a segment is a group of participants who share the task and setting you study. Add more when contexts differ by city, household or income. Treat that as a starting point and read how it fits with other methods in our UX research methods guide.

Here is the arithmetic for a two-segment study. This is our model, not an official figure.

• Sessions: 2 segments × 4 to 6 households = 8 to 12 completed sessions.
• Recruits: completions × 1.25, the 25% margin we use to cover no-shows. That means 10 to 15 people.
• Field days for one pair: sessions ÷ visits per day.

A pair means two people, so 4 to 6 field days is 8 to 12 person-days on three-hour visits. The model assumes one city. If your segments sit in different cities, count field days for each city and add travel days. A single pair covering Delhi and Chennai has made two trips.

Because someone swaps the place or the task for something more convenient. Clients book a conference room. Visits turn into group sessions. Participants describe their routine instead of doing it. Once the setting or the task is replaced, you are running an ordinary interview (UXmatters, 2012). Our advice: move the session to the real setting. If that is impossible, call it a user interview, as UXmatters suggests, not a contextual inquiry.

Fill in the sheet below before you recruit. Each row has a pass test, and any "fail" means the study will probably lose its context.

Use this alongside a one-page market research brief so the sheet and the brief agree.

Get informed consent from everyone who will be in the room, including people who join later. Ask again before recording any new activity (GOV.UK Service Manual, 2017). For a workplace visit, we recommend written permission from the employer as well as the participant, because the participant cannot grant access to a shop floor or an office.

Recordings and household details are personal data under the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act 2023 (DPDP Act 2023). The Market Research Society of India (MRSI) and ESOMAR codes ask for informed, voluntary consent (ESOMAR code of conduct). Our recommendation: before you enter a home, agree the visit with the adult household member who owns or rents it, and for a gated society, tell the society office or security in advance.

Plan for the people who are always there in a home or shop: a spouse, a parent, a colleague. Decide before the visit whether they may stay, and record their consent if they do. Our informed consent guide has a form you can adapt and the Indian rules.

GOV.UK also asks you to plan for emergencies and to avoid excluding disabled people or those who need support. Going in pairs is described as easier and safer.

Remote sessions suit computer-based, desk-bound work that fits on one shareable screen. The researcher is not in the room, so you lose the physical surroundings and anything off screen. Sessions of 2 to 3 hours work. Turn your camera off during observation to reduce distraction, and invite participants to follow-up sessions to see full workflows (Nielsen Norman Group, November 2022).

Remote is a poor fit when the task is cooking, caring, repairing or buying. If the task is a purchase, a shop-along is a better format.

Our ethnography service, home visits or virtual sessions, is the format closest to a contextual inquiry. We do not sell a package with that name. You share the task, setting and segments in your brief, and we assess feasibility and send a tailored proposal and commercial quote. Once you agree, we recruit.

• Recruitment by city: we target by household and demographic profile and run participant identity checks before invitation.
• Languages and moderators: we can run sessions in languages other than English and supply moderators.
• Deliverables: recruitment, fieldwork materials, recordings, transcripts, structured data exports and research reports, depending on the scope we agree before the study begins.
• Invitations: participants are invited according to each project's requirements and their profile. They receive incentives only after the stated participation requirements are completed and validated.

We price each project individually and offer a free pilot. Send your brief to support@qualfacto.io. We aim to reply within one business day, Monday to Friday, 10:00 to 18:00 Indian Standard Time (IST), though detailed briefs may take longer.

If you live in India and would like to take part in studies like this, see how to join and get invited. Registration is only an expression of interest and does not guarantee selection or invitations; invitations depend on each project's requirements and your profile, and rewards depend on the specific study's terms.