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Camera with requests
Dream Recorder
Photogram paper
The Listening Glass
Friends and family map
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Probe tasks ranged from the straight-forward to the surreal. For example, on the back of a repackaged disposable camera we made requests for specific photos, which included "Who lives in your home", "Take a photo on Sunday at 3pm", "The view through your letterbox".
A repackaged memo recorder became a single-use dream recorder requesting that a vivid dream be recounted. Sheets of light-sensitive photogram paper included instructions to record an impression of objects left on surfaces. A 'listening glass'- an ordinary drinking glass repackaged with a permanent marker pen - included instructions to "listen to sounds around your home" and to write what was heard directly onto the glass. In total, about a dozen iterms were developed for this study.
In February 2001, we placed advertisements for volunteers in a variety of London newspapers. Having recruited twenty households from the greater London area, we visited each volunteer and gave them a pack of domestic probes. About six weeks later we collected the hundreds
of returned items, notes, images and diagrams. The returns served as a rich resource providing a myriad of glimpses into peoples' domestic lives.
The probe returns were organised and archived onto CD ROM, but were never systematically analysed. Used as raw data, they provided a catalyst for the development of design proposals.
Ethnographic studies of probes being designed and assembled at the RCA were undertaken to develop the ethnographers' understanding of this novel approach. These studies, in turn, contributed to the development of an adapted approach to probes. Devised by ethnographers at Lancaster and Nottingham, adapted probes incorporate social science research methods and are intended to engage researchers and inhabitants in cooperative analysis of the design domain and to elicit information informing design.
Probes represent both a method and an approach. Taken as a method, they suggest the use of multiple, easy-to-use tasks to make the job of collecting data more engaging. As an approach, they advocate the use of open, ambiguous, and even surreal tasks as a way of undermining the assumptions both of volunteers and researchers.
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