This perspective argues that culturally responsive information services require user research approaches that extend beyond conventional needs assessment. Needs assessment remains valuable for identifying service gaps, user preferences, and broad patterns of demand. However, when used alone, it may miss how information needs emerge within everyday practices, social relationships, language environments, technologies, and institutional histories. Contextual inquiry offers a complementary approach by examining information practices as situated within the contexts where people seek, evaluate, share, avoid, and act on information. Drawing on LIS traditions in information behavior, information practices, and service design, this article positions contextual inquiry as a bridge between user research and culturally responsive information service development. It argues that contextual inquiry can reveal tacit barriers, informal workarounds, trust relationships, translation practices, and moments of uncertainty that are often invisible in decontextualized assessment methods. Using multilingual health information services as an illustrative example, the article shows how contextual inquiry can help libraries and information organizations move from identifying service gaps to understanding the lived conditions under which services become usable, trusted, and meaningful. The perspective concludes by outlining implications for service design, community partnerships, AI/search tool evaluation, and assessment practices that better reflect users’ situated information worlds.
- Open Access
- Perspective
Extending Needs Assessment Through Contextual Inquiry: User Research for Culturally Responsive Information Services
Author Information
Received: 07 Jun 2026 | Revised: 12 Jul 2026 | Accepted: 26 Jul 2026 | Published: 28 Jul 2026
Abstract
Keywords
contextual inquiry | needs assessment | culturally responsive information services | user research | information practices | service design
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