A Systematic Review of the Probes Method in Research with Children and Families

Critical Analysis

In this article, the authors perform a literature review of 25 studies that leveraged cultural probes in the context of research with children. From these, the authors identified a wide variety of understandings and implementations of probes, and concluded that there exist unresolved tensions in how the research community understands the value of culture probes.

Cultural probes have been broadly used as a way to study hard to access or intimate contexts, such as research with children in the home. Probes “enable researchers to get closer to understanding in-situ,” and are considered legitimate research tools that can be used to “understand lived experience and promote participant voice, gather requirements, seek formative feedback, and inspire creative ideation.” They serve a number of purposes, including seeking and viewing what is happening in peoples’ lives. Probes take a variety of forms, which include journalling, sketching, video recording, and photograph capture.

One way cultural probes are characterized are as a form of the “experience sampling method or personal tracking,” such as the case of tracking sleep, fitness tracking, and other time-based activities. Another is the use of photo capturing, which involves “inviting participants to take photos of environments that researchers were not able to be physically present in.” Often, participants are asked to use their own digital recording devices to complete these activities.

The data generated from cultural probes is typically analyzed through an inductive, open coding approach, to generate patterns of behavior; this is “largely in keeping with a social sciences qualitative research tradition,” and researchers use the data to “get closer” to understanding experience at a local level, even when those experiences don’t involve technology.

Research Value

The value of this work in informing my own research is that it:

• Provides a strong, empirically grounded link between experience sampling, the collection of photographs and videos, and cultural probes as a methodology
• Shows a history of cultural probe use in HCI and informatics research, and the general acceptance of this method as a “first-class citizen” for data gathering