Constructing Cultural Probes!

I’ve decided to create some cultural probes to build on my observations and interviews. I think this is an appropriate form of research to engage users as I have read that the most positive feed back from cultural probes are the elements that leave space for creativity and children love being creative and hands on.

In my cultural probe I want to get a better understanding of what the kids really know about what they eat, what they can cook/prepare and also how they envision the best cooking utensil.

However when I started to construct the probes I found it more difficult than I first imagined to come up with activities that when completed would give me lots of rich information. After a lot of thought and many ideas, my probes consist of:

- A kitchen cupboard to fill with food that they commonly find around their home.

-A food diary that they can log the meals they have eaten throughout one week, their favourite meal, a meal they can cook etc ...

-A kit with some building materials, for them to envision a brand new kitchen utensil.

I will be giving my cultural probes to one of the slightly older classes at Tiny TAYstes and at a Brownie Troop I've been helping at.