found that they provide access to children’s every day life that are not accessible through other means.
This makes the method particularly interesting for use in the design of artifacts supporting daily life activities and out of a classroom context.
Wyeth [2] found her informants not so motivated to carry out some of the activities traditionally associated with the method, like diary keeping and collages.This represents a serious
drawback as obtaining self-report of experiences and attitudes over a particular period of time with diaries is one of the strongest elements of the method.
difficulties of obtaining self-report by children over time can be overcome by involving parents and by using appropriately defined playful assignments in the form of cultural probes. This can be achieved by adapting Experience Sampling method [3].
probes package included diary/booklet for Tom
one for his father,
stickers
a disposable camera
pencils, colored paper,drawing paper, crayons
an empty CD-ROM (to burn pictures if they would prefer making digital picturesover taking them with the disposable camera, which they did)
candy (a chocolate egg)
and a small toy that makes sounds (a cow) for fun as a present.
Tom was asked to place stickers representing feelings in the booklet every time the stuffed toy would beep. The stickers should describe where he was, with whom, what he was doing and how
he was feeling. Tom’s father, wrote in his diary what he and Tom had done every day and also if there had been any important changes in the situation of the newborn that day. He was also asked to report if Tom had made anything remarkable, funny or moving statements that day.
Tom was asked to make some pictures with the disposable camera and do two tinkering assignments.
The first assignment was to make something for his newborn brother and take it to the hospital for the next visit. In the second he had to make a drawing of his brother in the hospital after a visit there.
Finally there was a card with things to photograph:
“Something…”: boring, scary, funny, interesting, beautiful, you are proud of, and “You and…”: your hero, favorite toy, favorite place at home, favorite place in the hospital. On the card the parent could write down the where and when the picture was taken.
The hope was that Tom would be motivated by the playfulness of the activities that are not unlike
other activities he does for school or leisure. We were worried whether Tom would be at all willing to complete the booklet and whether complying to the prompts from the phone would be annoying to him.
As it turned out, Tom was very punctual filling in the diary three times a day for a full week.
Querying about feelings with the stickers worked very well, though, the emoticons themselves could have been clearer according to Tom’s father. Tom was not keen on the tinkering exercises, which we had originally thought would be the most attractive activity for him.
He took most of the pictures required, which turned out to be very revealing and inspiring for the eventual.
The study presented complemented interviews with parents and with hospital staff, providing also the
perspective of the child.
Though this study is small ( featuring only one child -Tom) it does however present some interesting lessons for future research:
• A combination of cultural probes and experience sampling seems a promising way to study
experiences and feelings of young children over prolonged periods of time.
• The cooperation of the parents was something that we counted on, and which in this case was
indispensable.
from
Riekhoff, J. and P. Markopoulos, Sampling young children's experiences with culture probes, in 7th International Conference for Interaction Design and Children, IDC 08 2008, ACM: Chicago, USA.
my thoughts..
the general finding seem to tally with the article by Wyeth and Diercke's (2006) Designing Cultural Probes for Children. - Mainly that there should be an opportunity to create.
- task should be achievable without help, though an adult 'supervisor' might be there to offer support- this supervisor may also have a diary to fill out. This could give two ( or more) views on what is happening and what and why it is felt.
- role playing or fantasy may encourage engagement
- the camera especially seemed to engage the children, providing the opportunity to easily visualise moments ( through the use of analogy?)
- activity goals should be clear- instructions un-complicated and easy to follow- think IKEA instructions..
- stickers are well liked and able to be used in a variety of ways- to indicate pleasure /displeasure for example.
- diary is ok however it may not always be filled out - be careful of making it too like 'homework' or school work.
[1] Iversen, O. S. and Nielsen, C. (2003). Using digital cultural probes in design with children. In
Proceedings IDC 2003, 154-154.
[2] Wyeth, P. Diercke, C. (2006). Designing cultural probes for children. OZCHI '06, 385-388.
[3] Kubey, R., Larson, R., Csikszentmihalyi, M., (1996) Experience sampling method. Applications to
communication research questions. Journal of Communication; Spring 1996; 46, 2; 99-120.
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