Exploring how cultural probe kits are designed: Towards a guide for design researchers

Abstract

User-centered design refers to an approach to design which places emphasis on the needs and expectations of users while developing design ideas and includes users in the design process. To gain an in-depth understanding of the users' needs, values, thoughts, and feelings, user-centered design utilizes research methods that collect, depict, and make sense of data on user experience. In this sense, designers and design researchers utilize diverse user research methods varying from traditional approaches to innovative approaches to obtain user data. Cultural probes, one of the innovative approaches, is considered as a data collection technique that inspires and informs design by adopting a participatory essence. The method is implemented through the cultural probe kits that assist participants to conduct practicing textual, visual, or three-dimensional self-documentations by assigning them predefined tasks that invite them to describe their experiences, actions, thoughts, and feelings through various ways. By completing these tasks, participants provide designers and design researchers with a variety of user data to analyze to develop an empathetic understanding with potential users and generate design ideas. In the prior studies, cultural probes are often included as a method used in research design to gather information about a particular user experience, a particular product, or the characteristics of a community. There are a few examples examining the approach itself by illustrating how the method is applied in detail. Among these, not many studies explored the process of developing a cultural probes kit by focusing on the probe kit components. From this perspective, this thesis intends to gain an in-depth understanding about the process of developing cultural probe kits by taking various aspects of cultural probe materials into account and, as a result, to propose a guide that helps to improve probe design decisions. To that end, two data collection methods, which are document analysis and participant observation, were employed in this thesis. These data collection techniques enabled gaining a broad knowledge on contents and materials consisting of the kits and the process of designing cultural probe kits. Followingly, the collected data sets were analyzed with qualitative content analysis in order to draw out outcomes that will be transformed into a framework to guide careful design of cultural probe kits. The empirical study followed within the scope of this thesis consists of two studies: a main study and a supplementary study. In the main study, which was conducted in three phases, data on contents and materials consisting of the kits and the process of designing cultural probe kits was collected, these data sets are analyzed and explained in detail, and in the third phase, the findings that will be synthesized into the guide content were presented. The supplementary study was conducted with an intent to observe the initial implementation of the guide. Accordingly, the guide was distributed to its first practitioners and after they developed cultural probe kits, their feedback on the guide was received. The main findings of the study were achieved as a result of the main study and synthesized for developing the guide. Initial findings proposed four categories to understand contents and materials constituting the cultural probe kits: kit components, equipment, task types and activities, and task features. The varying sub-components and different properties of these components were illustrated in detail under these categories. With further analysis, more detailed findings which enabled making deeper interpretations were illustrated and consequently, particular instructions that offer strategies to improve probe design decisions were asserted. These instructions were outlined under three main aspects of developing cultural probe kits: preparing cultural probe tasks, arranging tools and equipment, and ensuring relevance with the research focus. All these findings were synthesized for creating a guide which systematically describes the process of developing cultural probe kits and provide guidance to design researchers in order to make effective probe design decisions. Additionally, with the supplementary study, the first implementation of the guide provides a framework to design researchers for organizing the overall process of designing cultural probe kits, making sense of the properties of cultural probes contents and materials, and therefore, utilizing them more effectively and carefully.