Cultural Probes Outcomes

After finishing the design of the cultural probes I began to make several of them in preparation for handing them out.  As my cultural probes took longer to make then first anticipated I decided that I would only hand out  six probe packs.

I have had a varying results and feedback from my cultural probes.  Overall the probes have been fairly successful and I have received positive information back.
The probes have been particularly useful in focusing my attention to one area of anti social behaviour.

Personal evaluation of probes
When designing the probes I designed them to allow the participants freedom with their response.  This was to allow for quirky or unusual anti social behaviours to emerge that I would not of necessarily thought of.

The responses that I did receive back were standard responses.  This felt a bit deflating as I was expecting some unusual answers back.  The responses received however, did pin point nuisance noise as the main anti social behaviour that affected the participants.  The types of noise described by the participants ranged from speeding cars to noisy students.

Although the responses were not as exciting as I had hoped they did bring nuisance noise to my attention.  This has led me to steer my project towards anti social noise.  Instead of concentrating on anti social behaviour as a whole I can focus my attention on the noise side of it. I feel that although I did not get the results that I had hoped for my probes have still been successful in influencing my project.

One draw back has been the time it has taken to make each probe.  Each card has needed to be printed and glued on to mounting board then cut out.  I wanted my probes to be well made in order for people to put effort in to them.  The time consuming job of making the probes has meant that I have made less of them. I would of preferred to of handed out more probes to allowed for a varied result.

The cultural probes have also provided me with good visual information.  This will benefit when displaying the probes, as readers will not be bombarded with writing.

Participant evaluation

When receiving the cultural probe back I asked each participant about his or her thoughts on this process. The general feedback is listed below.

Negatives aspects
-found it hard to visually draw on the people, could of went about it in a different way.
-not sure about how specific to be when asked about what anti social behaviour affects them the most

Positives
-it was very quick and simple to complete
-was quite fun, not very taxing
- made me aware of anti social behaviour
-the cards looked aesthetically pleasing.

The overall process of the cultural probes has lead me to better understand how people interpret my designs.  The process has shown that you really need to be clear about what you are asking people.