The AI industry uses "context" to describe what the model receives. This book is about something else entirely: Human Context — the person's situational reality, and the obligation of intelligent platforms to understand and serve it.

Drawing on twenty-five years of consumer research, David W. Norton argues that the companies who win the Intelligent Era are not the ones who extract the most data, but the ones who return the most value, using AI to help real people close the gap between what they are thinking and what they are able to do.

Built around four field-tested frameworks — situational markets, modes, the Stupid/Dumb/Smart/Genius ladder, and time value — Human Context is a guide to building intelligent products that compound trust instead of burning it.

What the book covers.

The Goal Posts Moved. Your customer compares you to a system that read their situation unasked — and doesn't care it was a competitor. It's the baseline for the rest.

Choosing Your Intelligence. Every company calls its products intelligent; the word distinguishes nothing. Stupid, Dumb, Smart, Genius — precise enough to place your products and argue placement.

The Markets People Live In. You plan by product, feature, or segment — none tells you what a person faces now. How to catalog recurring situations in the customer's words, counted.

The 21 Situations. A situation without a size isn't a market. Twenty-one, sorted obvious to externally driven, each sized and run through three industries.

Getting into Modes. Two people in one situation need opposite things, and you can't tell which. An inventory of the modes customers enter, the signals that reveal them, a map crossing the two, the intersections to build first, and one empty column that tells you the most.

Time Value. You can tell whether a process completed, not whether it was worth the time. Three propositions — time well saved, well spent, well invested — and how to tell which applies.