"Cultural probes consist of any number of materials designed to inspire people to thoughtfully consider personal context and circumstance." 
It is an exploratory research method to indentify key patterns and themes that might emerge from a participant group or culture.
The facilitating tools are very flexible, such as postcards, maps, journals, cameras and recording devices.

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Ethnographic field studies and interviews focus on the reasoning behind users' behavior and are examples of methods that can help you form an understanding of users' behavior, such as why they left a website so quickly. 

Qualitative Research - Example Methods

Hanington, Bruce M. Universal Methods Of Design: 100 Ways To Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, And Design Effective Solutions. Beverly, MA : Rockport Publishers, 2012. Print.

Universal Methods of Design

"It is an organizational framework reminding the researchers to attend to, document, and code information under a guiding taxonomy of Activities, Environments, Interactions, Objects, and Users."

AEIOU

- "It is a process used to externalize and meaningfully cluster observations and insights from research, keeping design teams grounded in data as they design."
- Recommended recording 50-100 observations of each person interviewed from a contextual inquiry. It can also be done for usability tests.

Affinity Diagramming

"It provides key insights into a participant's activities and design paterns as the researcher follows him or her closely throughout his or her daily routines." The purpose is to gain a true sense of the user's actions.

Shadowing

Cultural Probes

- "Not all product attributes are equaly important to the customer. Use Kano method can determine which attributes have the greatest impact on customer satisfaction."
- It is often used in combination with surveys and interviews.
- The five attributes are: required, desired, exiciter, neutral, and anti-feature. 

Kano Analysis

- "It tries to find out which desin elicits the optimal emotional response from users." 
- Show participants a prototype, and ask them to pick a number of adjectives that best describes how they feel about the design. The adjectives are given on a series of indexed cards and categorized into positive, neutral and negative word clusters.

Desirabily Testing

- KPIs keep the team informed and guided to maintain a pulse on critical success factors for a product or service.
- The KPI should be selected for one reason; they are fundamentally action-oriented. For instance, assessing customer sentiment about a new campaign.

Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

- The mental model diagram can help articulate root causes behind behaviors and develop solutions.
- First, identify the group to study, called the task-based audience segments, and then conduct research such as interviews, card sorts, and usability tests to find out the behaviors, beliefs, and emotions people have as they accomplish a task against a feature.

Mental Model Diagrams

- The researcher participants will be the ones who are in charge of the research agenda, and they will also be the ones who analyze and reflect the result. 
- Using participatory methods allows researchers to understand and engage with the local realities more and therefore formulate solutions that are more specific and effective. 
- Participatory methods do not require special settings, but the participants should be in an environment where they are comfortable.  
- Compare to other research methods, participatory methods give participants more autonomy and require the participants to be more proactive. 
 
- Challenge: The views of most marginalized people are largely absent in public forums, which further excludes them and amplifies the perspectives of the more powerful groups.

Participatory Methods

- Associated with academic papers, literature reviews are a useful tool of any design project for collecting and synthesizing research on a topic.
- The guiding factor in selecting literature for the review is that the literature is relevant to the design project, clearly explains how it is informed or informs the design investigation.


Literature Reviews in Design Projects

A focus group is a qualitative data collection method that involves small groups of people participating together in an interview focused on a specific issue or topic. The dynamic interaction among group members can often elicit richer, more detailed information than what might be uncovered in a traditional one-on-one interview. For example, this approach has become a standard technique in business and industry for understanding consumer tastes and preferences. Because these group discussions yield extensive qualitative data, the sessions are typically recorded and transcribed to facilitate thorough later analysis.

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