I found link to this on the Textiles Futures Site.
http://www.equator.ac.uk/index.php/articles/629Domestic Probes/

A new and exciting way to collect user data and may provide me with inspiration for my research. I am now looking at the way we view our domestic space due to finding out Experiential Design is more product design orientated and I would find it hard gathering research and case studies.

				Domestic Probes Domestic probes are collections of provocative tasks designed to elicit inspirational information from people about their lives at home. They provide an alternative to more traditional methods of user research from the social sciences, such as questionnaire studies, focus groups, or ethnographies.

At the start of the Domestic Experience we developed a set of materials called Domestic Probes to reveal details of people's home lives - their interests, obsessions and aspirations. We were interested to learn what peoples' homes looked like; the details of their domestic routines; the sounds around their homes; the dreams they had at night.

Camera with requests Dream Recorder Photogram paper The Listening Glass Friends and family map

Probe tasks ranged from the straight-forward to the surreal. For example, on the back of a repackaged disposable camera we made requests for specific photos, which included "Who lives in your home", "Take a photo on Sunday at 3pm", "The view through your letterbox". A repackaged memo recorder became a single-use dream recorder requesting that a vivid dream be recounted. Sheets of light-sensitive photogram paper included instructions to record an impression of objects left on surfaces. A 'listening glass'- an ordinary drinking glass repackaged with a permanent marker pen - included instructions to "listen to sounds around your home" and to write what was heard directly onto the glass. In total, about a dozen iterms were developed for this study. In February 2001, we placed advertisements for volunteers in a variety of London newspapers. Having recruited twenty households from the greater London area, we visited each volunteer and gave them a pack of domestic probes. About six weeks later we collected the hundreds of returned items, notes, images and diagrams. The returns served as a rich resource providing a myriad of glimpses into peoples' domestic lives. The probe returns were organised and archived onto CD ROM, but were never systematically analysed. Used as raw data, they provided a catalyst for the development of design proposals. Ethnographic studies of probes being designed and assembled at the RCA were undertaken to develop the ethnographers' understanding of this novel approach. These studies, in turn, contributed to the development of an adapted approach to probes. Devised by ethnographers at Lancaster and Nottingham, adapted probes incorporate social science research methods and are intended to engage researchers and inhabitants in cooperative analysis of the design domain and to elicit information informing design. Probes represent both a method and an approach. Taken as a method, they suggest the use of multiple, easy-to-use tasks to make the job of collecting data more engaging. As an approach, they advocate the use of open, ambiguous, and even surreal tasks as a way of undermining the assumptions both of volunteers and researchers.