Rethinking Cultural Probes in Community Research and Design as Ethnographic Practice

AbstractUnderstanding social practices as they co-evolve between researcher-community is fundamental in “design and social innovation” where local knowledge, resources, and agency meet to solve wicked problems (Rittel and Webber, Policy Sciences, 4, 155–169, 1973). In this chapter, we seek to explore the traces that researchers and community members leave behind as indexical forms of representation. Contemporary perspectives urge a critical examination of the interplay between design and broader structural and cultural issues (Björgvinsson et al., CoDesign, 8(2–3), 127–144, 2012). Design methods, however, are often chosen arbitrarily reflecting a “toolbox” mentality that potentially misses culturally embedded nuances (Dourish, Implications for design. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 541–550), 2006). Cultural probes as part of this “toolbox” are often associated with ethnographic methods, yet were never intended to generate data, whereas ethnography goes beyond data gathering to analyze socio-cultural meaning and practices (Boehner et al., How HCI interprets the probes. In CHI Proceedings Designing for Specific Cultures, 2007). We present two case studies to discuss the use of cultural probes in participatory design as enablers of dialogue in open-ended conversations with communities. We draw on reflexive practices and Manzini’s concept of “diffuse design” and “expert design.” Working in communities can thus become a form of “public ethnography,” an effort to understand and analyze social practices from multiple knowledge perspectives as an ongoing process.