Co-Designing Technology Probes

11 Dec 2021

Technology probes are useful design research tools that help us understand how people decide to use something we design. With my colleagues at the Affective Interactions Lab we published a paper on this at the OzCHI conferenceGough, P., Kocaballi, A.B., Naqshbandi, K., Cochrane, K., Mah, K., Pillai, A., Deny, A., Yorulmaz, Y., Ahmadpour, N. (2021). Co-designing a Technology Probe with Experienced Designers. ACM OzCHI ’21, 30 Nov.–03 Dec., 2021. Preprint Online this year, which looks at our experience designing a technology probe for a project we call Tangible Feelings.

This paper was awarded Best Paper at the ACM OzCHI 2021 conference.

Technology Probes and Reflection

Technology Probes are used in design research to understand how a user will choose to interact with an object. It might be something tangible, but could also be a piece of software. It’s roots are in design probes and cultural probes, like those discussed by Bill GaverBill Gaver, Tony Dunne, and Elena Pacenti. 1999. Design: Cultural probes. interactions 6, 1 (Jan./Feb. 1999), 21–29. DOI:10.1145/291224.291235 that included notebooks and cameras and other tools to record how people interacted with the world. The point of technology probes is to design a piece of technology, give it to someone and find out how they choose to use it over time, maybe a few days, weeks or months. This research will have a small cohort of users/participants, but they will give you really rich data about their interactions with your design.

What we did

We ran a small user study with a technology probe, which gave us some interesting results, and then ran workshop with designers to see how the technology probe could be designed. These were both included in the paper.

User study

We started the project by deciding to create a device to help people reflect. On their day, on their lives, etc. Reflection is normal and natural, but we wanted something that would help people come to a point when they are ready to reflect. People don’t spontaneously reflect, so a piece of technology might be able to help someone prepare themselves. Also, reflection itself is a process, rather than an outcomesee: David Boud, Rosemary Keogh, and David Walker. 1985. Promoting reflection in learning: A model. In Reflection: Turning Experience into Learning (1st ed.). Routledge, London & New York, Chapter 1, 18–40. , so technology might be able to facilitate the kind of reflection that could lead to personal improvement, or behaviour change. At this stage of the project, we are looking at how people would actually interact with a device to help them reflect.

We prepared a probe package, to give to users. This technology probe was interactive, it had LEDs that would show your heartbeat as a point of focus. The process I used to create the probe itself was to mock up a cardboard model for scale, use plasticine to mould the form, which was then 3D scanned and printed. A shelled version was used in the interactive version, with a pulse sensor, an Arduino Nano and some addressable LED rings.

The result of this study was that our ideas for a point of focus turned out to be a distraction. There was also room to improve the design of the technology probe itself. But this is a key point about design probes: they’re not often subject to the “normal” process of iterative design. The researcher gives the technology probe to the users, as-is. So if there’s usability issues, they can potentially impact the use of the technology. This is was the case for us, as we were designing a hand-held object.

Design workshop with designers

So, rather than doing an entire user study to solve the usability issues, we gave a group of experienced designersthe designers were researchers and practicing designers who are associated with our lab in some way a chance to live with a “blank” (i.e. non-interactive, solid, 3D printed) version of the object we had designed for a few days. They were given a package with the 3D printed probe, markers and plasticine and materials, an instruction book with a link to a guided breathing exercise. After a few days the designers had familiarised themselves with using the probe to reflect.

We ran a workshop that focused on discussing how the designers felt that they could transform the probe. They wrote a short statement that was included in the paper that outlines their background or positionality as a designer, and how they would change or improve the design of the object.

What we found

There were five possible directions proposed by the workshop participants, which were influenced by their positionality. This worked because the probe had an objective (help people reflect) and a basic form, with its own affordances, but was fairly open-ended in the way that the user could possibly interact with the probe. Each of the designers used this open-endedness with their own experience to come up with something unique.

This makes sense to me: my background working with people in health, and doing in research with data visualisation influenced the original design of the probe to include biofeedback as a point of reflection.

So what?

There’s two things to take away. First, as we say in the paper:

By creating an environment that represents a diverse group of designers from a range of design philosophies, with different abilities, socio-technical, political and cultural backgrounds, it is possible to increase our chances of producing complex and multifaceted outcomes.

More variation in the positionality of the designers lead us to more interesting outcomes and ideas. This is fed by an appropriate amount of openness for the designers to work in. I don’t think it would have been successful if there was a stipulation for the device to be interactive, or to have biofeedback, like the original concept had.

Second, this is a generative method, a way of producing concepts and ideas that can be further explored. Our approach was related to technology probes for reflection, but we don’t see why it couldn’t be used in other contexts.

Technology probes are an interesting area for research. I’m particularly interested in exploring how we can combine co-design and biodesign to create technology probes, but there will be many more facets of the Tangible Feelings project to come.