Contextual inquiry (CI) is a user-centered design (UCD) research method, part of the contextual design methodology. A contextual inquiry interview is usually structured as an approximately two-hour, one-on-one interaction in which the researcher watches the user in the course of the user's normal activities and discusses those activities with the user.

Contextual inquiry defines four principles to guide the interaction:

If specific tasks are important, the user may be asked to perform those tasks.

A contextual interview generally has three phases, which may not be formally separated in the interview itself:

Before a contextual inquiry, user visits must be set up. The users selected must be doing work of interest currently, must be able to have the researcher come into their workplace (wherever it is), and should represent a wide range of different types of users. A contextual inquiry may gather data from as few as 4 users (for a single, small task) to 30 or more.

Following a contextual inquiry field interview, the method defines interpretation sessions as a way to analyze the data. In an interpretation session, 3-8 team members gather to hear the researcher re-tell the story of the interview in order. As the interview is re-told, the team add individual insights and facts as notes. They also may capture representations of the user's activities as work models (defined in the Contextual design methodology). The notes may be organized using an affinity diagram. Many teams use the contextual data to generate in-depth personas.

Contextual inquiries may be conducted to understand the needs of a market and to scope the opportunities. They may be conducted to understand the work of specific roles or tasks, to learn the responsibilities and structure of the role. Or they may be narrowly focused on specific tasks, to learn the details necessary to support that task.

Contextual inquiry offers the following advantages over other customer research methods: