Re: Cultural probes

At 09:13 05/12/2003 +1100, Donna Maurer wrote:
>I've been thinking about some ethnographic approaches to information
>gathering and
>have come across cultural probes.
>
>I understand the basic concept of getting participants to use the probe
>pack to record
>details about their day/task/whatever you are studying.
>
>However, are cultural probes only used, as the title suggests, to gather
>information
>about culture or can they be used to gather information about activities?
>I guess I can
>use a probe pack for whatever I want, depending on the goals of the study,
>ethics etc,
>but is it still called a cultural probe if it isn't aimed at culture...
>
>Sorry if this is vague - still thinking through it.

What we're doing is investigating the culture - as in 'context' - of an
individual or group, and this can include anything about their lives.
There's a good paper on the use of cultural probes in the context of
socio-technical systems, that came out of the UK Equator project:

http://machen.mrl.nott.ac.uk/PublicationStore/2002-hemmings-2.pdf

And yes the authors do use the term cultural probe.

Louise Ferguson

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