Cultural Probes

The cultural probes are tailored packages of maps, postcards, cameras (they are increasingly replaced by smart phones) and other items given to users in local or remote test sites for their responses. Researchers purposefully left their requests vague, ambiguous, and even absurd in order to evoke free and imaginative responses from the participants. The probes are used to pursue a design approach seeking inspiration, and they can also be designed for data collection. The cultural probe packages are often designed with openness and aesthetics. When the packs are returned by the participants, researchers tent to use them continuously as living reminders of the sites, with individual items spurring-on or serving as resources for their design. Cultural probes can provide rich inspirational materials, when combined with interviews, they spark intense conversation/dialogue with the participants.