Cultural Probes and the Value of Uncertainty (Gaver, Brucher, Pennington, Walker)

Designing for pleasure is different approach than designing for utility
Designing for utility is different approach
Pleasure is best with empathy, passion, humor

> This is a strangely narrow interpretation of pleasure: pleasure can be through rigor, surprise, change, familiarity, difference, etc..

> I suggest that utility and pleasure are interchangeable: something is not easily used if it causes displeasure. (We’re going to except here the circumstances where frustration is the goal of a “product.”) The well-balanced hammer is designed for utility and, one could argue, for pleasure. The sense of the dropped weight in each end of the product gives rise to to a more optimal–read: easier–use.

Cultural probes: design-led approach to understanding users through empathy and engagement
– knowledge has limits
– values uncertainty, play, exploration, subjective interpretation

Towards knowing your audience…

Designing for friends: “we know them well, but that doesn’t mean we know exactly what we should make for them” (6).

> Important to recall that when we “know” the “audience,” there are still possibilities of their having interpretations (or actions) that we could not have predicted.

Probes: “collections of materials posing tasks to which people respond over time.

Probology: uses probes to encourage sujective engagement, empathetic interpretation, and a pervasive sense of uncertainty as possible values for design.

> I like this phrase: pervasive sense of uncertainty. I would not aim for this, at least not in my following work, but returning to Forlizzi and Battarbee, this would fit into choices over what elements I provide that are fluent experiences, and which would present uncertainty through a cognitive experience. How much do I want my audience working mid-experience to figure it out.