Make The Strange Familiar, And The Familiar Strange
Posted on May 5, 2011 | posted by:
After the first phase of my research, in which I performed a visual audit of artists who visually represent complexity, I inverted my focus towards our studio. Upon review, I was asked why I hadn’t performed this exercise on myself. I considered this feedback in relation to our collaborative environment and opened it up to my classmates.
I was curious how as a class the Transdisciplinary Design students were imagining and developing a language in regards to complexity and how they might articulate that language when asked to photograph it. I enlisted a few of my fellow students to record their experience through a cultural probe in the form of a disposable camera with instructions to photograph anything they saw that represented complexity. I gave them about a week to complete their assignment. I found the results engaging in ways I could not have imagined. Through my efforts, I was able to evaluate the pros and cons of cultural probes as a research method and to glean valuable insights about by colleagues views of complexity.
I followed the typical process in researching by cultural probe: prompt participants to document something specific; collect responses and summarize results; code findings, organize them, and analyse them for patterns; use them to produce connections and tell a story.
Upon receipt of their images, I reviewed them in concert, arranged them in a collage and attached codes. In this way, I was able to cluster ideas and record findings opportunistically. I found their images enlightening and quite beautiful when juxtaposed next to each other. I observed unusual connections almost immediately in cases such as similarities between the heavy iron structural framework of the Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island and the dense cluster of dried tree branches.
The student subjects are all part of a the same community and they undoubtedly share a lot of similar views, but the photographs they took were varied enough to make things interesting but when combined. Together, they create a really beautiful overview of ideas about hierarchy, nature, built environments, individual scale, collective scale, inside, outside, natural complexity and designers’ tendency to force simplification through diagrams and maps.
“Probes are collections of evocative tasks meant to elicit inspirational responses from people, not comprehensive information about them, but fragmentary clues about their lives and thoughts”. -Gaver, W.W.
One of the characteristics of probes is the active role that the participant performs as a co-researcher. Through self-documentation, the participant uses the questions, prompts or directives to guide them in recording targeted experiences. Through this process, participants are also encouraged to record ideas and thoughts through cameras, journal or voice recording devices. This captures the context and perceptions in a way that is not influenced by the presence of the researcher. It can document the needs, feelings, values and attitudes especially in situations that would be hard for the researcher to gain access to personally. The subjective nature of the probe allows for the exploration of new opportunities through surprising or unexpected results. Often posing open-ended or absurd tasks allows the researcher to reveal new opportunities rather than focusing problems that we know already. Collecting data from multiple participants in various situations ensures a more credible representation of a given experience or environment.
The opportunity for imaginative engagement and storytelling offered by cultural probes provides a rich and inspiring source of insight from which to generate design ideas. The open-ended, provocative and sometimes weird nature of the probe, can help designers and design teams uncover hidden features of familiar routines in daily life. The findings are meant to be elaborated further through storytelling and personal associations on the part of the researcher. Also during the early stages of the design process when design opportunities, stakeholders and artifacts are yet to be determined; probes can suggest avenues of exploration that otherwise might be overlooked. Their participatory nature can provide the users an opportunity to share in the process of ideation. The process of setting up the probe can initiate interaction between users and designers, as well as within design teams. This experience can generate a dialogue that ultimately allows designers to better understand and empathize with the community they are designing.
The process can unfortunately be hard to analyze and interpret as it is highly subjective. There is no way to ensure that all the relevant data has been collected and that some valuable observations have not been missed. It can also be difficult to know for certain what the participating photographers intended to represent with every picture that they took, or what the possible significance of these images might be. But it is important to frame the use of a cultural probe less like a form of scientific experimentation and more like a way to start a dialogue and inspire design.
I found this performative and reflective process extremely engaging and immediately inspirational through the creative synthesis and storytelling that happens when trying to relate different images. I found that due to the first phase of research developing a broad view of possible ways to conceive complexity I was equipped with a language to talk about the images that the probes returned. I would have had less sure footing from which to draw conclusions from my findings.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gaver, W.W., Boucher, A, Pennington, S, and Walker, B.”Cultural Probes and the Value of Uncertainty.” 2004. Interactions, Volume XI.5, pp. 53-56.
Mattelmäki, Tuuli. Design Probes. 2006. Gummerus Printing. Vaajakoski, Finland.