Co-designing a Technology Probe with Experienced Designers

Technology probes are low-fidelity devices that can be used to understand research participant’s lived experiences, but they are not usually subject to iterative design. There are opportunities in human-computer interaction to develop technology probes through co-design, by including diverse perspectives during probe development. To explore this opportunity, five design researchers with different disciplinary and cultural backgrounds engaged with a technology probe to support daily reflections, discussed new directions in a co-design workshop and developed narratives to negotiate possibilities of the probe. This paper presents observations described by each of the researchers using the probe, and insights from the process we followed. We discuss how the the designers’ postitionalities are reflected in the processes, and how they brought value by shaping narratives of the different roles a technology probe might take. We also discuss how we may use co-design of technology probes as a generative method, highlight the importance of open-endedness in the process, and reflect on lessons learned.