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Cultural Probe

Cultural probes are tools used in the design process to gather insights about users' lives through creative tasks, fostering empathy and understanding. The document outlines a three-stage process for designing, delivering, and analyzing cultural probes, emphasizing the importance of participant engagement and communication of findings. Additionally, it promotes an online course on Human-Computer Interaction to enhance skills in user-focused design.

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Sebastián K Teles Nejamen
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7 views5 pages

Cultural Probe

Cultural probes are tools used in the design process to gather insights about users' lives through creative tasks, fostering empathy and understanding. The document outlines a three-stage process for designing, delivering, and analyzing cultural probes, emphasizing the importance of participant engagement and communication of findings. Additionally, it promotes an online course on Human-Computer Interaction to enhance skills in user-focused design.

Uploaded by

Sebastián K Teles Nejamen
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Cultural Probes

Before you design a mobile app, a professional online platform or an interactive experience such as an
immersive museum exhibition, it’s essential to understand users and the contexts in which they will use
your design. People are experts in their own lives and experiences. As designers, we can use cultural
probes in the early stages of a project to inspire and to build empathy with our users. This template gives
you the steps required to design cultural probes and take your designs to the next level.

What are Cultural Probes?


Cultural probes are packages of tasks you give to a target group in a design project to get a better
understanding of their lives. The probe tasks are often small creative challenges—writing a diary or
taking photos, for example—that not only help you gather information but also provide inspiration for
the design process. You typically give the probe to your participants and ask them to complete the tasks
on their own over a period of several days. The way you design the probe, and the tasks it contains, are
crucial if you want to sensitize users to their own context, elicit the desired information and playfully
invite users to share rich clues about their lives.

Best Practice
Stage 1: Prepare Your Probes
• Determine what you need to learn from the probe. The trick is to remain broad enough to inspire
design while remaining focused on the design problem. For example, if you want to design an app to
get asthma patients out to exercise, you may need insights into their social lives as well as their walking
habits. In such a case, you could design a task that asks them to take pictures when they are out for a
walk or a visitor book where people visiting could write a short greeting.

Start Learning Today:


interaction-design.org
Creative Commons BY-SA license: You are free to edit and redistribute this template, even for commercial use, as long as you give credit to the
Interaction Design Foundation. Also, if you remix, transform, or build upon this template, you must distribute it under the same CC BY-SA license.
• Decide which type of probe kit matches your target group. Depending on your goal and the users
themselves, some kinds of probe kits and tasks will be more successful than others. If you want to give
your probes to commuters, design a probe kit they can easily take on their commute. Regarding the
tasks in your probe kit, you could ask participants to write and draw about events or objects in their
context, photograph their situation at set times each day or map their daily routines and the feelings
they experience throughout.
• Develop your probes. Start with tasks that don’t require too much from the participants—e.g., providing
factual information or taking pictures. Later, they can solve more speculative tasks—e.g., describing
an idea for a fantastic exercise motivator. Decide whether the participants should complete each task
at specific times or on particular days or if you want to leave that up to them. All tasks should take no
longer than 5–10 minutes to complete each day and be completed over a 1-week period.
• Plan how you will deliver and collect the probes. We recommend that you deliver and collect the probe
kits in person to show your dedication and commitment to participants as individuals. You’ll probably
want to include your participants in an ideation session as part of the follow-up. So, it’s essential
that you also consider how and when you would like to do that and ask your participants for their
involvement as you deliver or collect the probes.

Stage 2: Deliver & Collect Your Probes

• Deliver your probes to participants. Let your participants know when you’ll be back to collect the probes
and then leave them to get on with the tasks they contain. As your participants carry out the tasks, they
will generate rich insights you can later use as input for your design process.
• Collect your probes. Once participants have been with the probes for the designated period, personally
collect them. Lay the kits out before you and start looking for patterns. Label each piece of information
with the participant’s name, as well as the where and when of the data.
• Engage your participants in an ideation session based on their insights. This often works well as a group
activity, and you can use different ideation techniques that you would typically use with your design
team. By now, your participants will be more sensitive to their context, thoughts and feelings thanks to
the probes. Remember to include materials from the probes, such as pictures, drawings and quotes, in
your sessions.
• Start a discussion with your participants. Ask them what they think of the ideas they’ve generated
and how and why an idea might help them in the future. Ensure you understand your participants’
motivations and reasoning by the end of the discussion.

Start Learning Today:


interaction-design.org
Creative Commons BY-SA license: You are free to edit and redistribute this template, even for commercial use, as long as you give credit to the
Interaction Design Foundation. Also, if you remix, transform, or build upon this template, you must distribute it under the same CC BY-SA license.
Stage 3: Communicate Your Findings

• Analyze your findings from the probes as well as your ideation session and discussion. There is no set
method for doing, this but look through all the material you have and see which patterns emerge and
which ideas they spark.
• Communicate your findings to stakeholders. Describe the ideas you’ve generated and what insights the
ideas are based on. You can create deliverables such as storyboards, user journey maps or personas to
help communicate more clearly.
• Use your findings as a basis to turn your ideas into concrete concepts together with your stakeholders.

Start Learning Today:


interaction-design.org
Creative Commons BY-SA license: You are free to edit and redistribute this template, even for commercial use, as long as you give credit to the
Interaction Design Foundation. Also, if you remix, transform, or build upon this template, you must distribute it under the same CC BY-SA license.
Do You Want to Learn More?
Learn how to use this template to your best advantage in our online course Human-Computer
Interaction: The Foundations of UX Design. Sign up for it today and learn how to create and improve
your UX portfolio if you haven’t already started the course.

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The Foundations of UX Design
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Computer Interaction. If you want to become a true, user-focused UX Designer and set yourself apart, you
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Interactions between products/designs/services on one side and humans on the other should be as
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Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) will give you the skills to properly understand, and design, the
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related occupations will grow by 12% from 2014–2024, faster than the average for all occupations. This
goes to show the immense demand in the market for professionals equipped with the right design skills.

Learn more about this course

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Creative Commons BY-SA license: You are free to edit and redistribute this template, even for commercial use, as long as you give credit to the
Interaction Design Foundation. Also, if you remix, transform, or build upon this template, you must distribute it under the same CC BY-SA license.
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Creative Commons BY-SA license: You are free to edit and redistribute this template, even for commercial use, as long as you give credit to the
Interaction Design Foundation. Also, if you remix, transform, or build upon this template, you must distribute it under the same CC BY-SA license.

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