01.29 // Guest Speaker: Marti Louw, Cultural Probes Feedback
Syllabus | Class Box Folder | Cultural Probes Assignment
On Tuesday, CMU HCI faculty member Marti Louw came to speak with us about design probes and what they can be used for. She emphasized the importance of probes as a tool for exploration and opening different possibilities for design. Some of the main takeaways included:
- Look for obvious and non-obvious indicators. For example,the health of a stream can be measured directly but also by studying insects.
- Consider connotation. The tone of the probe can be fun and open-ended, it can also feel like a criminal investigation.
- Probes are exploratory. They can allow you to explore a question you are interested in finding out more about.
- Consider the best medium to answer your specific questions. What are the advantages of a physical probe that go beyond an interview or survey? Location and time-specific context are some of them.
- Consider diversity of interpretation. When we receive that data that comes back, different people may interpret it in different ways.
“A prototype is a question in the form of an artifact.” — Scott Klemmer, professor at UC San Diego
Initial sketches
The last half of the class we devoted to providing feedback on the different teams’ design probes in progress.
A substantial challenge is figuring out the research question or research goal, and exploring different ways to design a probe that asks that question.
Some of my observations from the students’ work were —
Consideration and respect for Construction Junction (CJ) (both as a facility and for shoppers as people with little time to spare). When possible, students chose concepts that would allow shoppers to participate either quickly, privately (on their own time and/or space), or anonymously.
Students also considered how research might intrude into people’s natural behaviors and bias the results.
Incentives and fun. Students considered what might motivate people to participate, for example using the gift of a rearview mirror keychain, or incorporating fun stickers or drawing activities.
A question I noted was how to elicit creative feedback from people who may not inherently be creative in the same way. For example, using emojis or memes might resonate with one audience and not another. An interesting question for future research would be, in what ways do people who shop at CJ express themselves creatively? For some, it may be verbal, for others maybe it involves social media or being around friends.
Exploration of different forms. Teams were able to imagine several different forms that their design probe might take, like physical kiosks or handouts. A few teams were able to draw analogies from familiar forms like shopping lists or parking tickets.
Behind everyone design probe is a question. Because of this, the various ideas the teams also subtly indicates what they want to design, or what they see as the scope of their design. For example, designing a probe that asks customers ‘how was your experience driving to CJ’ might indicate an interest in transportation services. A probe that asks customers ‘do you know where to drop off large items’ might indicate an interest in communication design.
Ideas for qualitative and quantitative research. Questions like ‘how does this experience make you feel’ and ‘how would you draw an advertisement for CJ’ start opening up possibilities for interesting insights.
