FMP (8) — DESIGN: PROBE KIT
Topic: Money
Timeframe: 02/10/23–23/11/23
Team: R.Hodge, R.Suri, T.Singh & Myself
OVERVIEW: PROBES
Making can be an effective tool for design-led approach to research, as we have discovered through our weeks of work 1,2. As described by Brandt, Binder, and Sanders — making as practice of participation takes place in an iterative cycle of making, telling and enacting. In practice, people make artefacts and organically share stories about what they made and what it means, creating authentic context for the researched topic.
Centred around personal engagement, craft and tactility, probe kits can serve as a vehicle for sense-making, reflection, interpretation, discussion and expression. Participants’ situated lived experience provides depth and nuance, which opens up new possibilities for design.
FINAL PIECE — CIRCUS: THE CULTURAL PROBE KIT
Circus is a fast, noisy, frenetic activity — and so is our experience of money.
The probe kit includes:
- a notebook
- an infinite pound
- a set of private/public receipts
- a pencil & kit description card
The probe kit explores:
- the perception of value — notebook questions the friction between monetary and sentimental value;
- perception of power — the infinite pound projects our personal priorities onto a limitless purchasing exercise, exploring where money exerts power over us (what current situation would you change if you had the funds) and how we would exert power, if given the chance (over our environment, life …)
- how money shapes identity-making — receipts prompt participants to reflect on what they think their purchasing says about them and how it co-creates their identity
- the multifacetedness, nuance and personality within the topic of money
Circus research kit prompts the participants to reflect on the personal nuances of their relationship with money through contextualised storytelling and craft. It appreciates the deeply personal and multifaceted nature of money, value and worth & allows for subjective interpretation of this customarily impersonal and cold topic.
Collected stories — rich and multilayered, reflexive of routines and aspirations, as well as appearances — generate new perspectives for design.
CRITICAL REFLECTION & LEARNINGS
It was incredibly challenging and rewarding, navigating the tension between guided and open-ended prompts and ignoring your personal expectations or preconceptions, in favour of the richness of the outcome. As a researcher, and a naturally curious person, I have 'questions to ask and things to find out', but exploratory research, and the focus on lived experience specifically, remains a forever uncharted territory — I had to learn to trust my artefacts and remain open to a variety of narratives, intimate perspectives, surprises.
It is a learning, that I am taking with me into the complex, fast-moving and ever-changing world, which could use a little more ground up open-minded exploration and willingness to listen, if you ask me. But hey, that’s just one woman’s lived experience — what is yours.
DONE! READ ABOUT MY PERSONAL REFLECTION ON THE PROJECT AND HOW WE ADAPTED THE CONCEPT FOR OUR GRAD SHOW HERE: FMP 9
