Cultural probes

Step-by-step guide

1. ‍Specify research question Define your research question or the focus of what you are interested in. Consider why you are doing research (exploratory vs. confirmatory research), what you want to do with your findings (personas, journey maps, system maps, etc.), and what sample size you’ll probably need. 
2. Identify participants Based on your research question, define criteria for selecting suitable participants, considering not only who you’ll send a cultural probe package to, but also when and where. Use sampling techniques to select your participants and consider including internal experts or external agencies for participant recruitment.
3. Plan and prepare Depending on your research aim, plan what you want to include in your cultural probe package and write up detailed instructions. These can include instructions for a diary study, taking photos, describing how participants are using products/services/goods, mapping out experiences or systems, and much more. It is crucial to test your instructions to ensure they are clear to avoid misunderstandings between researchers and participants. Define how participants should document their tasks: physical diaries, online blogs, smartphone apps, or a mix of different media. Don’t forget to communicate general information about the research project as well as a deadline establishing the time frame in which participants should upload their data. Also, consider incentives for participants (it is work for them!). Once you have all the components of your cultural probe package, prepare it so that it is ready to be sent out to your participants. 
4. Send out cultural probe packages Send out your cultural probe packages, including a preaddressed return package for physical packages. Also, provide information regarding who to contact if participants have questions or lose items included in the package. The length and depth of cultural probes varies with the research objective: from one day to several weeks.
5. Follow-up Review your returned packages and index the included data. Highlight important passages and try to find patterns among your data. If useful, schedule follow-up interviews with participants. Write up your individual key learnings and if possible use researcher triangulation to review the same content with different researchers. Compare your key findings afterwards within your team. Write a short summary that includes your conflated key findings as well as raw data to exemplify these, such as quotes, photos, or videos. Don’t forget to link the summary to your underlying data by using indices.

Method notes

• ‍Cultural probes are often a mix of various approaches like autoethnography, diary studies, and mobile ethnography, and are often combined with in-depth interviews to review the collected data retrospectively.
• Depending on the country and organization you’re working with, do not forget to check what kind of legal, ethical, and confidentiality agreements you need up front and which forms of data you are allowed to collect.