Cultural Probes
A Design Anthropology technique that uses materials i.e., object probes especially relevant to the community to understand people’s culture and how they view their space.
“The cultural probes — these packages of maps, postcards, and other materials — were designed to provoke inspirational responses from elderly people in diverse communities... The probes were part of a strategy of pursuing experimental design in a responsive way.”
Nature & context
Design Anthropology, User Research, Design Technique
Resources
Materials for the probe, construction plan, if geographically distributed shipping the probe to the participant’s location, clear instructions for participants as to how to use the probe.
Procedure
Before: Understand the context and identify probes/ artifacts that can help initiate communication or provoke thoughts for the participants. If constructing probes, conduct extra research to ensure that the resulting design is relatable for the participants involved (in the cultural context). Prepare some open ended questions to lead the conversation in the right direction. Recruit participants relevant to the context (as many as needed). If deployment to a different geographical location is needed, prepare package accordingly and handle shipping of the probes.
During: Record extensive notes giving attention to details, especially in relevance to the community and culture. Take ample photographs relevant to the context. If probes have been geographically shared, reach back to the participants to gather their responses periodically.
After: Quickly conduct an analysis, right after, of the notes, and pictures as well as other records generated like videos and voice notes and record/annotate your insights. Send out a thank you note to the participant(s).
Use Case
My team (all Asians) during the beginning phase of designing for food wastage, decided to focus on America because we had a predisposition that in Asian culture, food is given extra value. However, If given a choice, I would use a cultural probe, like photographs, of big family, small portion size, excess food thrown away etc., circulate the photographs geographically to people we know from Asian culture as well as to few American participants to see how each of them perceive it. Doing so, would have supported our predisposition or might have proven it wrong.
Sense Making Data
As a research technique, focus needs to be not on the object itself but its property such as form and materiality (Relevant to the context) that in turn will help improve and iterate on the insights generated during the initial research phase.