This was the subject of my slightly controversial presentation of this year’s OZ-IA conference. My talk wasn’t against iterative design, but definitely in favour of early stage contextual research to fully understand the user landscape in which you’re creating a solution for.
I am sure I’ll blog around many of the topics from the presentation in the coming weeks, but in the meantime my slides can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/iain.barker/context-is-everything-from-ozia-2008-presentation.
There is also a streaming video of the presentation. The visual quality isn’t the greatest (I’m the dot on the stage). But the mixture of slideshare and the video will make it like you were there yourself!
Video can be found at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/oz-ia2008 – you’ll have to dig around a bit, I can’t give a direct URL, but I’m far the right of the second row of videos.
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Slides 13-17 are great (ok they’re all great
Bill Buxton explains it by saying something like “get the right design before you get the design right” but I find myself fumbling when I try and explain it that way. I’ll try experimenting with some sketches like this instead 
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