Great article Dan.

Context can mean so many things and is dependent on so many factors.

The work I’ve done recently we’ve moved away from the context content block to the page adapting to you and your needs at that moment. The major problem comes with predicting needs is you get wrong early on, so evolution is important. Constant feedback and review.

Dan, thanks for the great post! I spend a lot of time with business analysts, stakeholders and (ideally) target end users talking about situationally how users might be coming to the site. Are they mobile? Needing to do something tactical? I the mood to browse? Ready to rant to customer service? All of these inputs affect how we emotionally structure the content and navigation, optimizing the experience for them. The potential for sensors and input beyond GPS and accelerometer data is exciting and scary (for privacy advocates) at the same time. It’ll be really interesting to see what the next round of mashups brings us, based on these new possibilities.

Thanks for your comments guys. I think a lot of this comes down to what we think a website is and can be in the future. Think we need to have conversations about different ways our expectations of what a site is could change of which context might be one.

This is a great post.

When talking with clients, I usually stress that we need to frame information in a way that meets the user/visitor’s ‘point of view’. This discussion is usually when we’re talking about writing content, but the notion of context driving features & experience really enhances this line of thinking.

I too am excited about the possibilities at hand, but like you am also a bit worried about the potential downside… if we give people different experiences based on context, there is the potential for designers/developers making bad/wrong assumptions, leading to a worse experience.

All-in-all though, I agree that this is how we should be thinking at the outset of projects.