Using Cultural Probes as a tool to conduct Service Design Research
By Diana Glozman
What are Cultural Probes?
Cultural probes (or design probes) are a design research method to learn more about a specific group of individuals on a much deeper level. Cultural Probes studies are typically conducted during the discovery phase of the service design process. Cultural Probes originated as a hybrid of artist-designer projects but have evolved and increasingly been adopted by the technology sector e.g. How cultural probes make your user research even better.
How do you conduct Cultural Probes research in UX and Service Design?
The Cultural Probes research process typically starts with a design team (sometimes a research team) tasked with learning about a new customer, community, market, or user persona. The design research team carefully crafts tasks and deliverables tailored for the target participants. Packages include printed instructions, note-taking materials such as notebooks, field methods, and disposable cameras. The goal is for these materials to assist with prompting participants to share deeper insights as well as cultural artifacts as part of this research.
Within tech, the term cultural probe is used nearly synonymously with Mobile Ethnography Much like cultural probes, Mobile Ethnography provides a research subject with tasks and asks them to document their behvaiours, needs or experiences for a given period of time. This collection of context rich, self-reflection data is then combined with other participants’ data and analyzed for patterns and trends. This research can thus help designers understand what problem to solve in the next phase.
Using Mobile Ethnography apps for Cultural Probes research
Mobile Ethnography is an asynchronous, design research methodology that researchers use to generate qualitative insights about respondent behaviors, activities, and experiences over time.
Data is self-reported by respondents over an extended period of time that can range from a few days to a month or longer in some instances. Respondents undertake tasks to capture specific information about activities being studied.
They are periodically prompted via notifications or mobile alerts to help ensure they complete their tasks as planned. Tools like Indeemo’s video diary app help support the process ensuring the tasks are accomplished in a timely manner.
The benefits of using Mobile Ethnography as a Cultural Probes research tool
Cultural Probes research methods provide deep insights, however, studies can be too expensive and time-consuming to conduct for many organizations. Mobile ethnography can be a great tool for collecting similar findings but in a much more efficient manner. Mobile ethnography applications like Indeemo, can be leveraged to help organizations save time and money while providing the benefits of real-time insights and efficient storage for all the research materials.
1. Cultural probes research saves time and money:
Cultural probes elicit great insights and artifacts from select participants. However, traditional cultural probes often require a great deal of time to prepare for as well as a larger monetary investment for the crafted packages. By leveraging respondents' Smartphones, it’s easy for mobile ethnographers to have a basis to pass on instructions as well as to provide an attractive and user-friendly way for participants to capture and record their experiences over a period of time.
2. Cultural probes allow you to surface deeper insights remotely:
With Covid-19 restrictions, it’s becoming increasingly harder to collaborate with participants. Mobile ethnography provides a channel for the design or research team to have access to research participants and their deliverables in real-time. Instead of relying solely on set meeting and discussion times, participants can be tasked and followed up with while they are in a specific context.
3. You can generate more context rich insights using cultural probes
Typically, Cultural Probe deliverables take time to review and consolidate. A specific location is needed for storing and a protocol may be needed for sharing the artifacts. With a digital process, each deliverable can be stored, tagged, and filed. This keeps the whole team organized and allows for research to be shared with larger groups without worrying about how to get deliverables back. Tools like Indeemo offer dashboards where the data can be reviewed, tagged and reported on.
Let our platform support your cultural probes research
Cultural probes is a powerful design research method for uncovering psychographic preferences on a much deeper and nuanced level. Aspects such as aesthetic, preferences, and emotional components can be unlocked through a properly designed and executed study. Mobile ethnography can help you achieve these findings in a more efficient manner, removing the need for travel, physical prompts, and storage for deliverables. It also helps you collate and synthesize the data gathered, improving your workflow in the process.
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