Users take photos to highlight important aspects of their lives and context. The photos are assembled into collages and studied to highlight opportunities for new technologies and barriers to their acceptance.
A sample of users are given a set of "missions" to take photos to highlight important aspects of their lives and day to day context. These may be of things that they value, cause problems, that generate certain feelings, etc. Data from these studies helps highlight opportunities for new technologies and barriers to their acceptance.
Related Links
Originators/Popularizers
This approach has been used by the design community and marketing groups for some time to explore cultural contexts.
Authoritative References
This is a newly developed technique, drawing on the use of cultural probes in the Presence project (see below).
Published Studies
Hofmeester, K. and de Charon, E. (editors), Presence -- New media for older people, Published by the Netherlands Design Institute, Keizersgracht 609, 1017 DS Amsterdam, www.design-inst.nl< A cultural probe study is reported by the Presence project which was part of the i3 European Network for Intelligent Information Interfaces. Older users were given packages containing maps, media diaries, postcards, cameras and photo albums to gather information about their lives which was used as a source of design inspiration. www.presenceweb.org<
du Crest, D. and Donnenfeld, S. (2003) Picture This! ESOMAR, Consumer insights conference, Madrid, April 2003. This paper is a summary of findings from a photo study conducted among 450 kids aged 8 and 11 years from nine European countries: United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway.Available from the World Advertising research Centre: http://www.warc.com/<
The authors at ESRI participated in a study of where a sample of users was invited to take photos around their homes following 7 missions. The study helped to gain a realistic understanding of the context within which future Smart home technologies are likely to be used and to identify roles for the technology in people’s everyday lives. For submission to Special Theme Issue of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.
Related Subjects
Diary Study : Some diary studies ask participants to take photographs of objects, people or environments that related to the goal of the study.
Detailed description
How To
Special Considerations
Facts
Also called:
Structured Enquiry, Cultural Probe, Media Diary, Photo Collage
Sources and contributors:
Chauncey Wilson, Nigel Bevan.