Overview

I had the opportunity to be a part of a Directed Research Group (DRG) under the direction of Dr. Tyler Fox. This DRG focused on using cultural probes as a method of gathering “data” to provoke inspirational design. Instead of designing solutions for user needs, cultural probes work to shift perceptions and discover new design spaces. Rather than defining a set of problems and analyzing and rationalizing data, probes are meant to be playful, exploratory, and stimulate subjective interpretation. This goes against much of what I have been taught throughout my time learning about the user-centered design process, and this project forced me to subvert many of those teachings.

The Task

“Help save the environment.”

Inspired by climate change activism, Dr. Fox challenged us to use cultural probes as a way of finding inspiration to design to save the environment. This was, of course, such a broad request and our team worked to figure out what that meant to each of us. After some soul-searching team decided that saving the environment meant reducing our waste footprint.

The next step was to design a probe that would help inspire us to design a solution for this issue.

Designing & Deploying the Cultural Probe

Prompts

(Playful, Interesting, Weird)

The probe needed to include a number of activities that could be completed and returned back to us for “analysis”. After a few sessions of brainstorming, our team curated a list of prompts and activities that we felt were fun and open-ended, but also able to provide us with rich insight into perceptions about waste and about the participant in general. We wanted participants to enjoy themselves but also complete as many prompts as possible.

In the end, we designed our probe to contain seven prompts to be completed over the course of one week and designed the “flow” of the probe to go from low to high effort.

Participants

Initially, our team planned on distributing our probes to a target demographic. However, after iterating on the probe prototypes we realized that, in the true spirit of cultural probes, we needed to embrace ambiguity.

In the end, we recruited six participants from a random places such as the UW Campus and a Buy Nothing Facebook group.

We finalized and deployed our six probes in late October 2019 and waited for the results.

Returned Artifacts

Day 1 - “Who did you want to punch?”

Send us a voice recording about a time this week when you wanted to punch someone in the face.

Day 2 - Write a Haiku About Plastic

Day 3 - “The Environment” Mad Lib

Day 4 - Diary Entry

Tell us about a time this week when you felt fulfilled. Write it as a diary entry.

Day 5 - Insta #TrashTags

Take an Instagram-worthy picture of the first piece of trash you find outside & create your own caption & #hashtag!

Day 6 - Plastics Scavenger Hunt

Day 7 - Build-A-Trash-Creature

Findings & Insights

Our team was overjoyed and so in awe of the artifacts that were returned to us.

Initial Insights:

• Activities with digital deliverables were not as popular

• Parents were excited to share activities with kids!

  • Kids got involved with the haiku and making trash creatures!

  • They even took the probes to school!

• Friends and spouses also got involved!

  • Hannah had her husband do the Mad Libs with her.

Emily and the Case of the Lost Artifacts

We noticed that some of the participants shared the cultural probe with their kids. One such participant was Emily.

Emily shared the probe with her kids, and they were so excited by it that they took it to school! It turns out that the WHOLE CLASS took pictures of trash, did the Mad Libs, and even made trash creatures.

However….

None of those classroom artifacts… not even a single picture, was returned to us.

We were so disappointed to lose out on such rich “data” but not all was lost…

Inspired Solutions for Saving the Environment

One thing about the cultural probes was certain: People loved doing it with their kids, their families, and even their classrooms.

The probe became a shared experience at home and at school. The lost classroom probe, the handwritten haikus, and handmade trash creatures all served as inspirations for the solutions to the task of saving the environment.

We learn “waste habits” as children from what we are taught at home and at school.

How do we change those established habits in adults?

Schools and offices accumulate tons of waste. Can we educate and take action in those spaces?

We think yes.

Our team devoted an ideation session thinking about activities that foster awareness about waste in offices and workplaces.

Some of our standout ideas included:

Monthly Subscription Box With Activities That Foster Thinking About Waste

Creating a box filled with fun-filled, interactive activities similar to the cultural probe that promote thinking about reducing our waste footprint.

Compost Club

Group of people who meet to share composting tips and progress in their schools or offices

Plastic Police

One person assigned to sit near T/R/C to make sure others are cleaning their plastic & recycling

La Croix Tower Social Media Challenge

Office/classroom competition to build the best Lacroix tower and document on social media

Final Reflection & Conclusions

This project helped me to see design thinking and research in a completely different way and really took me out of my comfort zone. I had always been taught that data and research needed to be quantified and systematically analyzed in order to support design decisions. Through the lens of a cultural probe, I was taught to subvert this way of thinking about data. With cultural probes research findings do not dictate design, instead, designers use their own subjective interpretations and imaginations to discover new design spaces.

I admit that at the beginning of this project, I was worried about how to “analyze” and “interpret” the returned probes and could not foresee how I would be able to come up with a design solution for Dr. Fox’s challenge. But by opening up to the possibility for unexpected responses, surprises, and even disappointments, I really did find design inspiration.

With more time and resources, I would have loved to have been able to create a probe for a classroom and see what sorts of responses would be returned. I would have also loved to have been able to sit down and do a short interview with each participant to get some additional details and insights into their experience with the probe.

Through the cultural probe I learned to value uncertainty, subjectivity, and my own intuition. I finally understood that the user-centered design process is a methodology not a dogma. There are many ways in which to design for humans.