Cultural Probes offer a Different Human-Centred Design Tool

Cultural probes are a way of inspiring new design ideas, not producing user research to analyse, said Bill Gaver of the RCA, addressing the NMK evening on "User-Centred Design and Beyond" in late March.

Gaver talked through the methods and values behind using cultural probes effectively, looking at the motivation that drove his team to assemble self-reporting tools for handing out to volunteer participants in the first place. They didn't have enough time or money to spend extensive periods observing in the field and they didn't want to use traditional interviews to gather information about people.

Instead, volunteers are offered a pack of stimulating ways of commenting on their life and environment. Probes are varied and each stands alone, so that participants can choose how they represent themselves and then send back each element as it is completed. This opportunity for choice allows for mutual respect, believes Gaver. And items are made easy to post, for instance, being designed as a postcard on one side, to encourage repeated communication from each volunteer.

Intended to stimulate and designed as open-ended, some probes and their associated tasks even tend towards the absurd: for instance, the dream recorder, which is activated by pulling a tab and records for 10secs for use after a vivid dream.

Examples of other probes include a 'sign-in book' for all visitors to the house; a sheet on which to record 'house rules'; social network analysis tools presented as an opportunity to describe your family and friends as shells and sea creatures on the beach, as a cricket game, as characters in Dante's Heaven and Hell. Where lists are solicited, they include capturing the bizarre and the detailed: 'the spiritual centre of the home', 'something red', 'your collections'. Items are customised: instructions to take 6 -10 pictures that tell these stories are printed on the back of single-use cameras.

The method provides the basis for multi-layered narratives about people, accepting the partial truths, wishful thinking and outright lies that are part of life, said Gaver. The uncertainty and ambiguity of tasks encourages subjective engagement, a feature that Gaver stressed for both participants and designers.

The use of probes is geared towards design generation, not problem solution, said Gaver. Probes are not analysed. What comes back doesn't 'have to be right', and is not accountable in traditional scientific terms, but is evaluated in terms of the design it inspires.

He was asked how the method went down with industry and Gaver acknowledged that he had only used it as an academic research tool. Although this work was supported by industry in a sponsorship role, he pointed out that this was rather different from using it regularly in business processes.

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