4.2.3.0 (What’s this number?)
The research is approaching a pre-insight gathering stage, which entails conducting scoping fieldwork in designated districts in Lebanon, throughout the month of July 2009. The aim of the scoping phase, as the name suggests, is to scope out the problem of social segregation on the field, and compare it with the context of social life in Lebanon assimilated in the literature review. The insight gathered from scoping will be valuable in designing research methods for the comprehensive ethnographic fieldwork planned for summer 2010. The scoping phase will focus on 3 methods:
1– Interviews with local authorities and community volunteers in designated districts.
2– Informal chats with youth groups in casual assembly venues, such as community centres, universities, bars, hairdressers, etc. in designated districts.
3– Cultural probe tasks with a small number of young people from designated districts.
The following focuses on the third method: A review of cultural probes and its appropriation for collecting inspiration/information on the social integration behaviours and barriers of youth groups in Lebanon.
Defining cultural probes
Cultural Probes are an innovative design-led approach developed in 1999 by Bill Gaver, Tony Dunne and Elena Pacenti as part of the Presence Project at the Royal College of Art. The aim of the project is to develop innovative technologies in domestic environments (1999). The probes constitute a collection of evocative tasks for exploring attitudes and aspirations and developing an empathetic and engaging understanding of a particular audience (Gaver et al., 2004).
Cultural probes were quickly adopted by numerous industrial and academic design and research group (Black, 2009) such as the Design Council, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the Cooperative Systems Engineering Group and Uscreates. Research topics ranged from designing technological interventions in domestic places (Gaver et al., 1999), to improving the health of staff in workplaces (Uscreates, 2007), to strengthening family intimacy (Kjeldskov et al, 2004).
The procedure of cultural probes starts with recruiting a small number of participants, then holding a face-to-face placing interview where every participant is given a cultural probes kit and an explanation about the project and the required probe tasks (Gaver et al., 1999). The participants then carry out these tasks over a specific period of time, usually from a week to 3 months. Researchers may want to carry out intermediary check-in interviews to verify the quality of task execution, or ask participants to send some probe responses back throughout the specified period of time. At the end of the period, participants may send the cultural probes back by post, or researchers can visit to collect and discuss further some of the task responses (Corti, 1993).
Advantages and relevance
There are a number of advantes to cultural probes that suggest its relevant to the case study of youth in Lebanon:
Unfamiliar and diverse audience: The Presence Project at the Royal College of Art entailed looking into 3 different communities: Majorstua, a district of Oslo; the Bijlmer, a large planned community in Amsterdam; and Peccioli, a small village outside Pisa. The researchers at the Royal College of Art were unfamiliar with any of these communities, and as a result, designed similar cultural probes for the 3 communities with very minor alterations (mainly linguistic). Thus, the motive behind conceiving cultural probes addressed the dilemma of ‘developing projects for unfamiliar groups’, so that through their function of understanding the local cultures, discussion and collaborative design can follow (Gaver et al., 1999). Correspondingly, despite the fact that Lebanon is a small country geographically, the wide range of social groups and their vast differences in culture, lifestyles and opinons make it challenging for a researcher to design insight-gathering methods and plan ethnographic fieldwork based solely on the literature review of this context. Due to numerous social integration barriers (Saadeh, 1992 pp. 76-94), even a researcher from Lebanon is not likely to be ‘socially’ informed of social groups outside his/her own. This is why cultural probes can be advantageous in this particular research, by offering a quick but enlightening narrative into the lifestyles of different young member of Lebanese social groups.
Interactivity and engagement: The unusual method of cultural probes can capture the participant’s attention, enthusiasm and curiosity more than would be the case with traditional methods. The researchers from the Presence Project described the initial reaction of their participants to the probes as follows:
“An assortment of maps, postcards, cameras and booklets began accumulating in front of them. Curious, they started examining the materials. Soon they were smiling and discussing them with the neighbors. As the feeling of the group livened perceptibly, we started explaining the contents. Worry transformed to excitement. Perhaps the probes would work after all.” (Gaver et al., 1999)
Elie Awad, the founder of Lebanese non-governmental organisation Youth for Tolerance said that often, his numerous interactions and activities with youth groups were met with a high level of apathy in engagement (Awad, 2009). In this case, the cultural probes method may prove helpful in engaging youth groups in Lebanon, if the choice of probes reflects a range of interesting objects that this audience already engages in on a daily basis.
Minimal influence in sensitive inquiries: The tasks in cultural probes are carried out by participants in their own time and away for the researcher’s interference. In addition, the tasks do not ask closed or direct questions regarding the insight required for the research. So for example, in a study on mediated intimacy at home, researchers provided diaries that asked participants to describe the temporal flow of their daily lives, instead of asking them for example, to describe their relationship with their partner. This is particularly important in the scoping stage of the case study of social groups in Lebanon. Direct questions regarding acceptance or rejection of other social groups and religious affiliation may seem obtrusive and intimidating, and yield doubtful responses, particularly if participants want to project an non-dicriminatory image about themselves. Therefore, asking indirect questions regarding social circles, travel locations, etc. may help answer these questions more efficiently.
Review of different cultural probes
The following typology will expand on some of the probes that have been deployed within the past 10 years. A cultural probes kit can bring together a combination of some of the following, but each probe acts as a stand-alone tool, to, in combination with others, provide a multi-layered narrative of the participants’ lives:
Camera: This is usually a disposable camera repackaged with instructions of photos to take such as ‘your home’ or ‘the first person you see today’ (Gaver et al., 1999). This probe useful when dealing with literacy issues.

(Gaver et al., 2004)
Listening glass: Participants are asked to place the glass on walls or doors of ethically safe environments to listen and write what is heard in the other room. It is a great probe for collecting knowledge not only about the participants but the people around them as well.

(www.sxc.hu)
Voice recorder: Cheap digital recorders are labeled with prompts asking participants to record specific instances that occur to them as soon as they can. For example, the Interaction Design group at the Royal College of Art asked participants to describe a vivid dream in 10 minutes as soon as they awaken from it (Gaver et al., 2004).

(Gaver et al., 2004)
List keeping: Participants are asked to collect routine lists from their every day lives such as to do lists, shopping lists, receipts, etc. (Dix, 2004).

(www.sxc.hu)
Diary: This probe became prevalent in social research in the early 90s before cultural probes were pioneered. It was inspired by the work of biographers and historians who had always considered diary documents a major history telling evidence. In cultural probes, the diary is given to participants over a certain period of time. The diary content can be as open as a blank notebook, or more closed with a series of specific writing or drawing tasks. The advantage of a diary is that it captures instant information that may otherwise be forgotten when inquired about later on in an interview for example. It also aids in addressing personal questions. Louise Corti writes that if followed by a concluding interview, diaries can give more insightful information than other traditional methods. The disadvantages of diaries however is that they require high literacy skills and are time consuming to upkeep (Corti, 1993).

(www.sxc.hu)
Postcard: Because of its friendly connotation, a postcard can address questions in an informal mode of communication. Another advantage is that it allows instant feedback from participants rather than waiting for the entire cultural probes kit to be returned or collected. Questions can be ‘please tell us a piece of advice or insight that has been important for ou’ or ‘what place does art have in your life’ (Gaver et al., 1999). Participants may choose to answer by drawing or writing or even creating photo collages.

(Gaver et al., 1999)
Map: This may literally refer to geographically mapping routes taken or valuable landmarks, or socially mapping relationships with family and friends. This allows people to come up with their own ways of visually representing their environmental or social connections.

(Gaver et al., 2004)
Conversation kit: This was developed at Uscreates to gather insight about the lifestyles of people at risk of cancer in Stoke on Trent. Participants, who were cancer awareness volunteers, were given a self-explanatory kit for holding conversations with friends and family members within the target audience. Thus participants took over the role of the researcher and completed conversation tasks successfully because of their intimate relationship with the interviewees. The kit included recorded instructions on an audio device, question and answer conversation forms, badges, and a range of feedback methods such as blog, post, voicemail, and email (Uscreates, 2009).

(Uscreates, 2009)
Text messaging: This probe was deployed by Uscreates as part of Experience Food at Work, a project which aims to improve eating habits in the workplace. This probe differs from others in that tasks are not given at the beginning of the probing period, but are texted by phone during precise times in the day. For example the question ‘what did you have for lunch today?’ would be sent to participants following lunchtime (Uscreates, 2007).

(Uscreates, 2007)
Online blogging: This probe is particularly useful when participants are highly engaged in online networking. It can function in the same way as instant cameras or diaries, only digitally through WordPress, Blogger, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

(Uscreates, 2008)
Inspiration vs. information controversy
Controversy has dominated discussions on whether cultural Probes are aimed at inspiring the researcher/designer or collecting fundamental information on audiences for further analysis. Graver – one of the first initiators of the concept of cultural probes – Boucher, Pennington and Walker, advocate that the objective of cultural probes is purely inspirational for capturing clues about lives and thoughts and inspiring design ideas. They criticise the approach of many research and design groups who have later adopted, adapted and rationalised cultural probes to produce informational comprehensible results (Gaver et al., 2004 pp. 1). An example would be the Cooperative Systems Engineering Group who made a pragmatic adaptation of the cultural probes approach to replace traditional questionnaire and interview methods for collecting unobtrusive contextual ethnographic information (Hemmings et al., 2002). A collaborative paper between the University of Nottingham and Lancaster University for the Equator (Equator, 2000) evaluates both the inspirational motive of the Royal College of Art and the informational motive of Lancaster University concluding that both are valid uses of cultural probes, however, in the latter case, much theory, peer communication and testing needs to go into the process of designing the probes in order to draw substantial conclusions from the findings (Hemmings et al. 2002).
The aim of deploying cultural probes in the case study of Lebanese youth groups is inspirational. This is because real life insight into these groups is relatively new territory, so this research does not yet have the required background information to rigorously design cultural probes for informational and analytical objectives. However, if this method proves fruitful in the scoping exercise, then thorough revisions and re-designs of the probes may be incorporated in the ethnographic fieldwork stage in the future.
Process of designing cultural probes for youth groups in Lebanon
The different stages of designing the cultural probes will be headed according to the design process followed at the Computer Related Design group at the Royal College (Hemmings, 2002). The order of the headings is representational and does not necessarily reflect the process in chronological form:
1. Planning
2. Recruiting participants
3. Selecting volunteers
4. Assembling cultural probes
5. Deploying cultural probes
6. Retrieving and analysing probes
7. Speculative design
Practice is feeding into writing for this section, so will update when I’m happy with the cultural probes I’m designing!
References
Awad, E. (2009) Interview with Youth for Tolerance founder [Internet] London, Beirut, 9 May [During a discussion evaluating the launch of the 961 Report newsletter, and communication intervention for integration]
Corti, L. (1993) Using Diaries in Social Research [Internet] in: N. Gilbert (ed.), Sociology at Surrey, Social Research Update (2), March 1993. Available from <http://sru.soc.surrey.ac.uk/SRU2.html> [Accessed 13 May 2009]
Dix, A. (2004) Case study: Cultural probes – Methods to study new environments [Internet] Human Computer Interaction. Available from <http://www.hcibook.com/e3/casestudy/cultural-probes> [Accessed 11 May 2009]
Equator (2000) Domestic Probes [Internet] Equator: Experience: Domestic Environment. Available from < http://www.equator.ac.uk/index.php/articles/629> [Accessed 11 May 2009
Gaver, W.W., Dunne, A., & Pacenti, E. (1999) Cultural Probes. Interactions, Vol.6 (1), pp. 21-29.
Gaver, W., Boucher, A., Pennington, S., & Walker, B. (2004) Cultural Probes and the value of uncertainty. Interactions, Vol. 11(5), pp. 53-56.
Hemmings, T. et al. (2002) Probing the Probes. Proceedings of the 2002 Participatory Design Conference. Malmaö, Sweden, pp. 42-50.
Kjeldskov, J. (2004) Using Cultural Probes to Explore Mediated Intimacy. AJIS Special Issue, Iss. December, pp. 102-115.
Saadeh, S. A. (1992) The Social Structure of Lebanon: Democracy or Servitude? Beirut: Dar Annahar.
Uscreates (2007) Experience Food at Work [Internet] Food Vision. Available from <http://www.foodvision.gov.uk/pages/experience-food-at-work> [Accessed 25 May 2009]
Uscreates (2008) Uscreates Comfort Zone [Internet] Available from www.uscreatescomfortzone.wordpress.com [Accessed 25 may 2009]
Uscreates (2009) Community Toolkits [Internet] NHS Stoke Cancer Awareness Programme. Available from < http://stokecancerawareness.wordpress.com/category/community-toolkits> [Accessed 25 May 2009]