Cultural Probe

The first thing that caught my interest is the idea of research through design. I'm torn between the scientific way of researching, which is boring, but proven to be effective, and the design approach, which sounds way more fun and interesting. My outlook on life is to have fun, but I really value being efficient and effective as well, so if design-as-research turns out to be an effective (both in data gathering and in cost) I would be the first to advocate it.



I've always been interested in the idea of trying to understand technology better by repositioning how it fits into our lives, giving it different functions and expanding it's uses. Who says a computer mouse can only be used as a pointing device for the computer? Maybe it can be used as a pendulum in a clock. The best people to do this are the people who aren't already accustomed to the object, like children or the elderly. They also bring up a good point that children and the elderly shouldn't be treated the same, as they sometimes are, alienating them from the rest of culture (South Park did a great episode addressing this problem). Not only did the researchers/designers use the elderly, but to reinforce their different (or at least old fashioned) way of seeing things they added elements to make them take a second look at culture and everyday life.

The results they got were mixed, but they did come up with a good understanding of the type of community the elderly live in and how it can be improved to include them more. So in their conclusion they say that they were able to communicate with the elderly. To me, that sounds like it was a success, maybe I'm just being skeptical, but it seems like somethings missing. I know they said they didn't plan on analyzing any of the data or compiling it, but it just seems so weird to not have any quantitative data and relying on the qualitative. I guess sometimes I just like to see numbers.