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Donna Maurer | 4 Dec 2003 23:13

Cultural probes

I've been thinking about some ethnographic approaches to information gathering and
have come across cultural probes.

I understand the basic concept of getting participants to use the probe pack to record
details about their day/task/whatever you are studying.

However, are cultural probes only used, as the title suggests, to gather information
about culture or can they be used to gather information about activities? I guess I can
use a probe pack for whatever I want, depending on the goals of the study, ethics etc,
but is it still called a cultural probe if it isn't aimed at culture...

Sorry if this is vague - still thinking through it.

Donna Maurer

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Louise Ferguson | 5 Dec 2003 22:16

Re: Cultural probes

At 09:13 05/12/2003 +1100, Donna Maurer wrote:
>I've been thinking about some ethnographic approaches to information
>gathering and
>have come across cultural probes.
>
>I understand the basic concept of getting participants to use the probe
>pack to record
>details about their day/task/whatever you are studying.
>
>However, are cultural probes only used, as the title suggests, to gather
>information
>about culture or can they be used to gather information about activities?
>I guess I can
>use a probe pack for whatever I want, depending on the goals of the study,
>ethics etc,
>but is it still called a cultural probe if it isn't aimed at culture...
>
>Sorry if this is vague - still thinking through it.

What we're doing is investigating the culture - as in 'context' - of an
individual or group, and this can include anything about their lives.
There's a good paper on the use of cultural probes in the context of
socio-technical systems, that came out of the UK Equator project:

http://machen.mrl.nott.ac.uk/PublicationStore/2002-hemmings-2.pdf

And yes the authors do use the term cultural probe.

Louise Ferguson
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John D'Ignazio | 8 Dec 2003 04:30
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Re: Cultural probes

We used a cultural probe in a design studio class to assess how technology
could be sensitively applied to a museum's fine arts gallery. It proved
useful to understand questions of experience within a culturally-laden
setting. We used the results to construct personae of museum-goers. It
was a key research tool that drove our final design solution.

Good luck!

-John

On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, Donna Maurer wrote:

> I've been thinking about some ethnographic approaches to information gathering and
> have come across cultural probes.
>
> I understand the basic concept of getting participants to use the probe pack to record
> details about their day/task/whatever you are studying.
>
> However, are cultural probes only used, as the title suggests, to gather information
> about culture or can they be used to gather information about activities? I guess I can
> use a probe pack for whatever I want, depending on the goals of the study, ethics etc,
> but is it still called a cultural probe if it isn't aimed at culture...
>
> Sorry if this is vague - still thinking through it.
>
> Donna Maurer
>
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Anthony Colfelt | 11 Dec 2003 12:33
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Re: Cultural probes

I think these sound really interesting. I was wondering what some of the
more learned in the HCI and/or anthropological fields make of an approach
which doesn't involve direct observation? How much peripheral, inferred
information is lost when there isn't a way to directly question the
participants?

Anthony Colfelt
  Senior Designer | BBCi Development & Services
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        anthony.colfelt <at> bbc.co.uk

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