Reviewing ‘Explorations’: A Primary Research Method

‘Explorations’ proved to be an efficient empirical method for the case study at this stage of the research. The richness of the findings that were extracted from only 18 ‘Explorations’ kits was surprising, and the response rate was 100%, with almost all the tasks completed within each kit.

These successes were due to a number of strategical factors:

Unfamiliar and diverse audience

The pioneers of this method of insight gathering were Royal College of Arts researchers who used cultural probes in the Presence Project. The project 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 opinions 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 the 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 ‘Explorations’ proved to 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 researchers from the Presence Project described the initial reaction of participants towards the cultural 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). However, the unusual method of ‘Explorations’ succeeded in capturing the participants’ attention, enthusiasm and curiosity. In a briefing meeting, the activist from Beirut humorously asked whether he/she could complete more than one kit because they were stimulating, and one participant from Zahleh emailed his/her admiration of ‘Explorations’:

“I am fortunate enough to receive a copy of the test that you are doing. Allow me to present my deepest admiration towards this new method in research. I just finished reading it all and I’m excited to start. In fact, I was looking for more pages to fill! It’s clear, simple, very well put, attractive and close to the person who will complete it.”

Minimal influence in sensitive enquiries

In a study on mediated intimacy at home, researchers from the Presence Project 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. Similarly, in ‘Explorations’, the tasks did not ask closed or direct questions regarding social integration parameters, barriers and identities. Direct questions regarding these issues may have seemed obtrusive and intimidating, and might have yielded doubtful responses, particularly if participants consciously chose to project a non-discriminatory image about themselves. Therefore, asking indirect questions such as ‘your top 3 priorities’, ‘your friends network’, or ‘5 things you like and don’t like’ gave participants the freedom of including or excluding any religious, political or cultural references in their responses. The participants who saw the implications behind a particular question even included explanations that would clear up any assumptions. For example, when asked about their favourite colour, one participant coloured in blue and added in parentheses ‘the colour of the sky’ so it is not misunderstood for the colour of the political party The Future Movement. Some other participants chose white, black and violet, the only colours that cannot be identified with political parties. Additionally, the tri-lingual dimension gave them further freedom to choose their preferred spoken and written language(s). Furthermore, the strategy of requesting gatekeepers – who are activists in their communities – to complete an ‘Explorations’ kit and pass on another to a friend to complete anonymously in their own time and space, required minimal researcher intervention and influence, and guaranteed honest responses.