Probes: A Critique

The idea of a ’Cultural Probe’ was initially coined by William Gaver as part of an EU research project investigating how elderly people can increase their presence in a community (i). I have chosen to adopt the probe methodology and when doing so I have understood that the method does not transfer straight away to my project and in fact this raises some questions.

One:

The participants in the Gaver study were provided by the Presence Project. Therefore, one of two assumptions can be made. First of all, the participants were being paid to do the study. Or (and most likely) they volunteered to take part in the probe study due to a strong personal interest. In my case, the participants in my probe study are people who I have selected. With people who are volunteers, there is an essence of self-motivation which I do not have in my participants. This problem also made me think of other probe work that I have seen. Jane Wallis has frequently adopted probes and again, it is in her clients best interests to complete the probes. So this brings me to my first challenge. How can I engage people to complete my probe tasks. My probe needs to be short and engaging. Not too difficult so that no answer or just a generic one is produced. Finally, in Jane Wallis’ probe “dress pattern” the participant spent a whole afternoon looking through old dress fabrics that she used to wear. The reason for this commitment to the task was because of the great willingness of the participant due to the gain that they were going to get from the project.

Two:

The context of Gaver’s original probe was Amsterdam which is both a known location and in the context of an individual, is something quite impersonal. This made it easy for Gaver to produce mapping tasks and make comparisons with (such as the ‘if Amsterdam was New York’ task). However, my probe is going to be deployed into an unknown, personal research space which immediately raises too problems.

1. It will be difficult to come up with something that all the researches can compare their rooms too as they are all going to be unique and individual.

2. I have no real idea what each of the participants rooms are like so I can’t provide maps to each participant to ask them to draw on. A solution to this would be for them to draw maps of their won rooms however this can be time consuming and may limit the quality of the results gained from the study.

Challenges

1. What can I provide to people to motivate them and make them want to complete the probe tasks?

2. How can you capture peoples spatial environment in ways other than drawing?

3. What do you need to know about an unknown environment to create a full picture?

4. How can you map something in an abstract way?

i. Gaver, B. Dunne, T. and Pacenti, E. 1999. Design: Cultural probes. Interactions 6(1). ACM, 21-29.

Urban Probes and the Augmented Trashcan

After doing research on the subject of ‘probes’ I thought that it would be fitting to blog this week about a project that I find encapsulates my opinion of how I should develop the methodology. ‘Urban Probes: Encountering Our Emerging Urban Atmospheres’ (ii) creates a conversation with the Urban fabric of San Francisco on the topic of narrative told through trash (rubbish).

At the beginning of the paper, Paulos and Jenkins set out to define what an ‘Urban Probe’ is:
“Urban Probes must directly intervene to alter and/or disrupt the usage, actions, or flow within the urban focus of attention” (i p.343)

Through the creation of an artefact, Paulos and Jankins wanted to ‘unambiguosly answer urban questions’ and this was realised through the following methodology.

Observation

Procedure: A trash can was located in downtown San Francisco and the researchers undertook three separate observations (stalking’s) where the trash can’s users behavioural patterns and route of travel in relation to the trash can was documented.

Results: The information gathered was analysed to conclude that a quarter of the people who used the trash can did so for matters other than depositing waste.

Observation (stalking) Results

Intervention

110 hand written, stamped addressed postcards were dropped around the city of San Francisco for numerous aims yet the one that interested me the most was their aim to investigate ‘to what degree are people interested in traces left behind by others? Will the items create narratives?

Each post card had its own unique fictional storey with three evenly distributed subject matter covering a scale between personal to private.

Interviews

Interviews were conducted with professional such as architects and city planners. In addition, street interviews with the general public were conducted across a sample of 20 people, covering a broad range of age categories.

Artefact Production: Augmented Trashcan

As trash is placed into the bin, the weight and images of the trash is recorded and an image of this is projected onto the walkway. Over time, the collage of trash images gradually fades away.

My Thoughts

I personally find the end artefact a little disappointing however, the conversation that the research team had between themselves and the general public of San Francisco through the use of probes is very inspiring. In his paper (i) Gaver states that the probe should be about generating the conversation that Paulos and Jenkins achieved and the methodology is something that I may be able to follow for my linked research project.

(i) Gaver, B., Dunne, T., and Pancenti, E. Cultural Probes. Interactions 11, 5 (Sep. 2004), 53-56

(ii) Paulos, E. And Jenkins, T. 2005. Urban Probes. In Proc. CHI’05. NY:ACM Press, 341-350