Cultural Probes

 When reason is away, smiles will play.

           

-        Paul Eluard and Benjamin Péret

Getting an intimate look into someone’s life is never easy.

Even people we think we know well are oftentimes a puzzle. Controlling how people think is impossible but still we try, wanting them to feel a certain way, wondering what they are thinking. The lecture on cultural probes stirred up some pretty strong feelings within me. My views on design are pretty simple. Design is there to make peoples lives better to make things easier. Good design needs to be informed. It serves a purpose or solves a problem. Having researched cultural probes over the last week I am very puzzled as to what purpose they serve if any?

Even if it is playful research I still think it is a waste of time. Asking people vague questions and giving them a disposable camera in order to see what they see to me pointless. No matter what they answer or what they capture will not in my opinion be a true representation of what they feel or think or look at. They know they are being watched therefore how do we ascertain whether there responses are influenced by this fact or not. We can’t know and giving them a listening glass will probably not help us find out.

Won’t researchers apply their own conceptual framework to whatever they observe because of the vague nature of the information? The artist Sophie Calle once followed a stranger from Paris to Vienna watching his every move unbeknownst to himself. Surveilling and documenting his movements. I suspect her findings would be more informed and real than any information a cultural probe pack would ascertain.

Fun or not.

Carol.