Publikation
The Gender Perspective in Cultural Probes
Gesche Joost; Sandra Buchmüller; Katharina Bredies
2008.
Zusammenfassung
This paper is a reflection on the application of participatory
design methods in a gender sensitive approach. Investigating their appropriateness to gather gender specific insights,
we are particularly interested in their potential of avoiding
the recreation of gender stereotypes. In this context, we reflect the design of our research environments, methods and
tools according to their unconscious gender assumptions
which might cause stereotype answers. Our empirical
study, called ‘Women’s Phone’, aimed both at involving
female prospective users to avoid gender clichés and to
critically investigate conventional and stereotypical design
solutions for mobile phones.
We judge the suitability of the methods used in three respects:
• Their value in preventing researchers from reproducing
conventional gender images,
• The researcher’s influence on the gender image that
the methods implicitly suggest,
• The impact of the researchers’ gender image on the
research result.
We consider our set of ‘cultural probes’ used in the project as the strongest evidence of the researchers’ inherent gender assumptions. Therefore, we will explore the visibility of the ‘gender point of view’ in the probes and draw implications from it for future gender-sensitive design inquiries.