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Abstract Incorporating contextual factors into engineering design processes is recommended to develop solutions that function appropriately in their intended use contexts. In global health settings, failing to tailor solutions to their broader context has led to many product failures. Since prior work has thus far not investigated the use of contextual factors in global health design practice, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 experienced global health design practitioners. Our analysis identified 351 instances of participants incorporating contextual factors in their previous design experiences, which we categorized into a taxonomy of contextual factors, including 9 primary and 32 secondary classifications. We summarized and synthesized key patterns within all the identified contextual factor categories. Next, this study presents a descriptive model for incorporating contextual factors developed from our findings, which identifies that participants actively sought contextual information and made conscious decisions to adjust their solutions, target markets and implementation plans to accommodate contextual factors iteratively throughout their design processes. Our findings highlight how participants sometimes conducted formal evaluations while other times they relied on their own experience, the experience of a team member or other stakeholder engagement strategies. The research findings can ultimately inform design practice and engineering pedagogy for global health applications.