HI Ben and Alison, (sorry Ben, I previously sent this message to you only, by mistake)
I used cultural probes in teaching for some years, now, and I can say that cultural probes are typically escaping both the axioms proposed by Eduardo. I would define them as a "creative design method to gather information" (not being a native English speaker I would skip the discussion about gathering, I think Edoardo's definition was clear to a certain extent, though I agree with some of the objections) I would add that the information coming from cultural probe is mainly qualitative, not quantitative. For this reason cultural probes cannot be used as an information processing method, though they are very creative, also because they stimulate the creativity of the observed subjects. I found it very hard for my students to translate the very rich picture they could create with the information from cultural probes in something that could be processed in a design project. (when the observed subject is very collaborative) the picture is complex enough not to offer many useful "grips" for the design process. Therefore other research (or design) strategies have to be used to interpret and process such information.
Ciao
Nicola
Nicola Morelli, PhD
Associate Professor, School of Architecture and Design
Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
http://servicedesign.wikispaces.com/
Blog http://nicomorelli.wordpress.com/
skype: nicomorelli
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ben Matthews
Sent: 24. september 2008 23:05
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Design as Research? Axioms?
Dear Alison,
I'm not sure I can shed much light on your first question, but I do have a
take on it.
On 9/24/08 1:13 PM, "Alison Barnes" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> as a fairly new practice led phd student i have many tentative half formed =
> questions about this thread (not to mention many other things!). two are...
>
> where do listers feel cultural probes might fit into the axioms below, or, =
> as they are allegedly about inspiration rather than information, do they no=
> t belong here at all as they are something different?
I think Cultural Probes are something of a can of worms. It would be nice to
make a sharp distinction between design methods and research methods and say
that Probes are not about attaining knowledge about the world, but about
facilitating the creation of something new. Unfortunately, it would be
misleading to do so. Much to Bill Gaver's chagrin, and despite his protests,
probes have frequently been used as a method of doing research about user
populations, rather than what they were originally intended to be (according
to Gaver), which was to subvert a data/research-based approach to design,
and establish a more designerly, open-ended, ambiguous, pluralistic way of
inspiring design concepts. Just to confuse matters, Gaver et al. introduced
probes as a "research through design" approach, though exactly what the
'research' bit consisted of can be a little hard to pin down. There are a
couple passing remarks in the '99 probes paper to the fact that probes
provided insights into the rich textures of local cultures, but there isn't
much more specific than that to go on.
Others' subsequent work that has applied (or bastardized) the probes is
largely different to the original though, and it depends on which
incarnation of them you are considering as to whether or not they constitute
a 'method', and then what kind of method: whether they are used as an
inspirational design method or a method to do research about users for
design. Two recent (and contrasting) discussions of the probes literature
are good reads, if anyone's interested: Boehner et al. 2007 and Graham et
al. 2007, which represent two different takes on the information versus
inspiration interpretations of probes.
All the best,
Ben
Boehner, K. et al., 2007. How HCI interprets the probes. Proceedings of the
SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.1077-1086.
Gaver, B., Dunne, T. & Pacenti, E., 1999. Cultural Probes. Interactions,
6(1), p.21-29.
Graham, C. et al., 2007. How probes work. In Proceedings of the 2007
conference of the computer-human interaction special interest group (CHISIG)
of Australia on Computer-human interaction: design: activities, artifacts
and environments. Adelaide, Australia: ACM, p. 29-37.
--
Ben Matthews
Associate Professor
Mads Clausen Institute
University of Southern Denmark
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