The Crucial Role of Cultural Probes in Participatory Design for and with Older Adults

1 Technology Design for and with Older Adults

In the course of demographic change, HCI research is increasingly focussing on older adults [8], [9]. This research however, focusses mainly on technical assistance systems and is technology-driven and oriented towards negative concepts of ageing: It places cognitive and physical deficits in the foreground and equates old age with neediness. Many of these research and design projects end up with products that are not welcomed or used by the target group. This is partly because many older people do not feel addressed as they do not perceive themselves as old or strictly refuse negative social images of old age [2].

In order to come up with adequate solutions, projects are now increasingly striving for a direct participation of older users in the technology development process [18] and focus on their wishes, abilities and resources [23], [6]. This requires the use of special cooperation techniques and their adaptation to the respective users, so that they can find out about and explain their requirements to software developers.

The research presented in this article is based on a project called “ParTec: Participatory Design in Technology Development for Demographic Change”^[1] that follows this direction. The project investigated and evaluated techniques for participatory software development with regard to their suitability for communication and equal cooperation between older adults and software developers. As an exemplary application a digital demonstrator of an online neighbourhood platform was designed with a group of older adults. Such an online platform that connects people with various needs and resources was regarded as a suitable design case based on the observation that in older age social networks become fragile and eventually older people need support in some respect, while at the same time they still can and would like to support others in many areas. The project cooperated with a group of eleven women and four men aged between 57 and 75 years. Several of them had recently experienced the transition to retirement.

In this article we will show that cultural probes, a self-observation and self-documentation technique [12], and subsequent qualitative interviews form an ideal starting point for requirements elicitation and participatory design with older adults. We will describe how they provided a strong fundament for all research and design artefacts on the way to a demonstrator and prepared and affected the Third Space [21] that enabled confident and productive cooperation between researchers/designers and participants.

We will first characterize the idea of participatory design referring to the Scandinavian tradition and the concept of Third Space according to Muller & Druin [21]. Then we give an overview of the participatory process in the ParTec project (Section 2). In Sections 3 to 6 we will describe how the insights obtained by cultural probes and subsequent interviews enabled the cooperation in all steps that followed. In the concluding Section 7, we sum up the observed effects of cultural probes in the context of a participatory research and design process.

2 Participatory Design and the Project ParTec

Participatory design (PD) in the Scandinavian tradition is primarily committed to workplace democracy. It is based on the belief that people are experts of their respective everyday working life and can thus contribute to technology development that is meant to support them. PD emphasizes the necessity for cooperating with future users in order to design products that fit their demands [26]. Accordingly, participatory techniques were developed for work contexts. Their transfer to the much less structured contexts, roles and processes in everyday life presents a special challenge [18].

Figure 1

Characteristics of Third Space, based on Muller & Druin [21].

Routine activities—at work as well as in private life—are performed in highly automated ways. The knowledge on which they are based is interwoven with everyday practices. During requirements elicitation such “tacit knowledge” [25], [15] does not come to light in interviews. However, hidden knowledge and desires are highly important and must be attended to in order to find out what kind of support people need and what future technical support is to be developed. PD techniques help in this process of discovery, interpretation and imagination. Brandt et al. [3] propose a combination of techniques for participatory design in order to bring such knowledge to the surface: the telling of stories, the making of things and the playful exploration of future possibilities. According to Muller & Druin [21] such techniques ideally create a hybrid “Third Space” between the various stakeholders’ worlds, a space that is equally (un)familiar for all parties involved and offers opportunities of expression and negotiation (see Figure 1).

Cooperation between designers and users becomes possible because of the hybridity of a situation that does not assign authority to one side but considers all participants in their diversity as equally knowledgeable. Implicit everyday knowledge and latent desires become accessible, visible and negotiable for all participants. In a Third Space, stakeholders can exchange views across various domains of knowledge and different disciplines and they are inspired to take new perspectives on what seems familiar to them. By confronting various perspectives everyday assumptions and matters of course are made visible and can be challenged. Problems are identified in cooperation and design decisions are taken together. Dissent and critical reflection is encouraged. This way creative new solutions can be found that benefit all.

We will use Muller & Druin’s characteristics of a Third Space when discussing the role of cultural probes with regard to their contribution to the following research and design steps, the applied techniques and their effects on the process of communication and collaboration.

Figure 2

Participatory design process in ParTec.

During the project ParTec, various participatory techniques were applied and studied according to the epistemological interests of the respective project phase (see Figure 2). The various steps in the ParTec process helped all participants and the project team to build up a common understanding of the (diverse) life in early retirement. Alternating between researchers’ activities and joint work in workshops, we discovered and reflected needs and demands, jointly developed ideas for future technological applications and translated those into design concepts for a digital neighbourhood platform.

Requirements elicitation started with a phase in which our participants documented and reflected their personal daily lives by means of cultural probes followed by qualitative interviews (see below, Section 3). The resulting understanding of daily life in retirement, its pleasures and problems helped the project team to define several retirement personas and problem scenarios describing situations that required contacting others (‘retirement stories’). These stories were discussed and refined with the participants in workshop 1 and led to a collection of main issues concerning networking in retirement (see below, Section 4). These issues were validated and extended using a creative technique in workshop 2. Starting from the retirement stories the researchers made up ‘platform stories’ and prepared rudimentary paper prototypes that illustrated in what ways an online neighbourhood platform might help with networking. Enacting those stories in workshop 3 participants discussed and refined the prototypes (see below, Section 5). As a final step we developed an interactive demonstrator and prepared some initial content, the participants could explore and evaluate in workshop 4 by signing up on the platform and virtually meeting others (see below, Section 6).

Some of the mentioned techniques are quite popular in user-oriented design. In ParTec, they were applied in a participatory way to activate our participants throughout the entire design process: sensitizing them for their personal situation, enabling them to identify their needs and requirements, to understand technical options, to co-create design ideas and critically evaluate design solutions. There was no problem at all applying these techniques with older adults, however the use of cultural probes as a first step turned out to play a crucial role in the entire participatory process.

3 Cultural Probes with Interviews: Understanding Retirement

As a first step in requirements elicitation, ethnographic methods of observation and interviewing are useful to understand a target group and the application context. Cultural probes (CP) help with self-observation: they consist of materials providing tasks and questions that stimulate people to reflect and document their everyday situation and practices. Gaver et al. [10] originally introduced cultural probes as a tool for inspiration in design. In HCI research, probes are now primarily being used to explore the everyday world of people that cannot be observed directly [1], [12]. Self-observation with probes sensitizes people to their personal situation and their daily practices by opening up new perspectives on what is familiar. Various types of probes with more specific designations have been described in the literature (for overviews see [20], [17]). In the ParTec project, the original designation as “cultural probes” was kept. We intended to explore and understand retirement as an unknown “culture”.

With regard to the exemplary design goal—creating an online neighbourhood platform for mutual and intergenerational support—a number of issues seemed necessary to explore: social integration, daily structure and activities, communication practices and technology use, needs, skills and preferences, feelings concerning their current situation in retirement, future plans and perspectives, their relationship towards technology and the younger generation. The self-observation tasks and materials in our cultural probes bags were developed to encourage the participants to document and reflect on their daily lives in order to shed light on these issues (see Figure 3). For the follow-up interviews the respective questions were compiled in an interview guideline.

Figure 3

What issues are addressed by what cultural probes?

A spiral-bound diary (Alltagstagebuch, Figure 4/1) started with questions concerning basic personal data such as age, gender, previous profession and current living circumstances. Participants were instructed to use seven slightly structured forms to document activities and social contacts from morning to night on seven arbitrary days, and a weekly plan to list recurring appointments. All this was supposed to shed light on the person’s social network and daily practices. Participants were asked to document important events of their life journey on a timeline (Lebensweg, Figure 4/2) and to classify them as either positive or negative. They also had to mark their ‘personal retirement’ as an event on the timeline. This gave us a first impression of their life course and how they experienced their retirement. A technology questionnaire (Technikfragebogen, Figure 4/3) was used to enquire about the participant’s ICT equipment and entertainment electronics and how often they used it.

Every participant got a small note pad with a pen and two small linen bags (Säckchen, Figure 4/4) marked with a happy and a sad smiley. They had to carry these items along for three days to note and collect positive and negative experiences and events. This probe was meant to make them think about what is easy or difficult for them, what makes them happy or sad in daily life. With these probes, we wanted to assemble information about what personal strengths (resources) and weaknesses (needs) influence their everyday lives. A disposable camera served the same purpose: participants were asked to take pictures of objects, persons and places or in situations they particularly liked. They were instructed to mark these ‘passions’—where possible—by heart-shaped stickers (Figure 4/5).

Some post cards with stimulating pictures and corresponding questions (Figure 4/6) asked them to note thoughts and wishes with respect to their past and future life: “You are looking into a crystal ball—what do you see?” “Sitting in a time machine—where do you want to go?” “Everything was better in the past?!” Another postcard asked for their associations concerning ‘youth’.

Figure 4

Cultural probes in the project ParTec.

The completed materials were collected after two weeks by project members. Already at this point first conversations arose, the participants felt stimulated, reported on thoughtful discussions with friends and were curious about the next steps in the project. The probes of each person were studied by the research team with respect to the retirement issues they had been designed to address. The respective insights and interpretations provided the basis for the preparation of the individual interviews to be conducted with every participant based on a previously prepared interview guide. By adapting the questions of the interview guide according to the results of the respective self-observation phase, it was possible on the one hand to avoid repeating questions that had already been answered by the CPs, and on the other hand questions could refer to the available statements and materials.

During the interviews, each lasting one to two hours, the cultural probes sat on the table and served as reference objects to be talked about. A good way to start the conversation was to go over the ‘life journey’ timeline and a ‘social network’ diagram, which had additionally been prepared for every person on the basis of their diary entries. By taking up in the conversation what we had seen in the probes, we dug deeper into their current life situation, their attitudes, thoughts and wishes. In the interview, we were thus able to expand our understanding of retirement. For example, the activities and hobbies mentioned in the daily diary or documented in the weekly schedule showed personal skills and abilities. In addition, new conditions associated with retirement, whether positive or negative, future plans and perspectives as well as related hopes and fears were discussed in more detail.

Nine women and three men took part in the probes phase. They represented various phases and situations in retirement. One of them was in partial retirement, one remained active as a free-lance author, for two of them their job situation or health problems had led to early retirement, some were in their first three years of retirement, others had been retired for more than 10 years. Most of them had an academic degree, some had a vocational training. Three of the participants lived under precarious circumstances and supplemented their rent by a side job.

Third Space with cultural probes and interviews

The use of cultural probes with subsequent interviews turned out to be an ideal way of starting a cooperation with our participants. In their analysis of “how probes work” Graham et al. [12] described typical attributes of probes. They partly overlap with the Third Space characteristics pointed out by Muller & Druin [21]. In ParTec we observed all of them and saw how well the probes were suited to create a cooperative Third Space. Using Graham’s terms, cultural probes served as ‘capture artefacts’ that reflected situations, practices, problems, desires and attitudes. They offered the participants new perspectives on their own everyday life and led to insights about life in retirement for both, participants and researchers (‘making the invisible visible’). One participant remarked: “The self-observation and documentation was extremely interesting (…) as it clearly confronted me with my own situation” (female, 67 years). The documentation of daily activities and contacts made them thoughtful: “I have never felt as socially integrated as I now see myself in everyday life.” (female, 63) “It is always me, who contacts the others. Do I bother the others?” (female, 66). The documentation of ‘passions’ revealed: “I have so many pleasant things in life.” (female, 68). During the interviews and discussions about the probes a common understanding of life in retirement emerged (‘dialogue and conversation’).

All participants commented on the appealing (“loving”) design of the probes material which they felt had expressed our appreciation for their collaboration and had enticed them to work with it. The probes bag had aroused their curiosity and overcame their initial scepticism: “That is something with computers, so I thought, no! … I have no idea about that, that is not for me. Then there was this bag with material and I thought: well, that seems somehow interesting. And I studied it and I totally got captivated.” (female, 68). They felt taken seriously as experts of their everyday lives and responded with great candor. “You caught us under the aspect of ‘age’… nobody has yet asked me questions because of my age, that simply never happened to me… that is a nice feeling! In particular, as ‘age’ is not highly appreciated in our society, and now it became valuable. That was fascinating.” (female, 63).

Cultural probes and the individual follow-up interviews offered a ‘Third Space’ for successful cooperation. The probes served as a common language: they expressed our research focus and provided a simple and entertaining means of expression for the participants. As such they offered the necessary ‘inbetweenness’ and provided a basis for joint learning, for negotiating interpretations, discussing perspectives and identifying problems.

In addition to that, the probes experience aroused the participants’ general interest in understanding and critically reflecting their current life situation. One participant commented: “I find it incredibly exciting, (…) these 14 days, that was a form of self-reflection, (…) I look at myself, what is my actual situation? A very exciting process and also very pleasant with these questions, the postcards…” (female, 66). This desire for self-reflection was shared by almost all other participants, culminating in the facetious claim: “Every retiree should get a ParTec bag (with cultural probes)!”

The cultural probes with subsequent interviews provided a favourable mindset and substantial material for all participatory steps that followed. We will show how they informed and inspired the artefacts we prepared for the workshops and how they helped to prepare and maintain a lasting Third Space for confident and productive cooperation.

4 Personas and Scenarios: How to Find New Contacts?

The concept of personas has been introduced for user-oriented software design by Cooper [5]. Personas clearly specify the target users and help to argue from their perspective in the development process [13]. Originally they were not meant to be used in participatory design; Cooper et al. [4, p. 94] explicitly prefer them to working with real users. For the software developers they keep users present in absence. But personas have also been used in participatory projects as a means of communication between users and developers (e. g. [16], [29]). Their modelling must be based on empirical data about the represented target group.

Most often personas are complemented with scenarios, i. e. stories in everyday language that describe what a persona does or experiences. Scenarios characterize current or future activities and highlight a persona’s goals, desires and behaviour in certain contexts and situations [24]. In contrast to formalized use cases or user stories in software development, scenarios take up the language and imagination of users and can thus facilitate communication with them [22].

In the ParTec project, we prepared four retirement personas and several retirement stories for workshop 1 to present and discuss our current understanding of retirement and its particular challenges (i. e. getting to know new people). In order to construct a set of rather diverse personas in terms of age, gender, education, retirement status and personal circumstances we used the data from cultural probes and interviews. Wishes, attitudes and living conditions gathered from the various participants were recombined, so that in our workshop discussions no one could see themselves fully portrayed but everyone could find themselves mirrored in some way by the personas and their stories. In addition, aspects from social studies on aging [11], [7] were assigned. This way we included gender and diversity aspects that were underrepresented in the group of our participants, e. g., a lack of technical equipment or physical restrictions that significantly impair mobility and social networking. Thus, the personas were in some respects more heterogeneous than the participants in our group and made marginalized conditions and situations visible and negotiable in discussions.

The four personas (three females and one male, see Figure 5) reflected the gender ratio in our group and in the ageing population of western industrialized countries in general. The retirement stories took up everyday topics and problems concerning making contact with new people that had been identified by cultural probes and interviews.

Figure 5

Four retirement personas.

Figure 5

(continued).

Figure 6

How can Ursula find someone to help her?

In workshop 1, all personas were introduced by posters. The respective ‘retirement stories’ were presented as storyboards on cards. In each story an empty card marked a gap that was to be discussed and filled by the participants (Figure 6). For example, Ursula would like to receive e-mails on her smartphone. She has tried to find out by herself using Google but without success. Now she is looking for someone to help her. However, she is reluctant to let unknown people into her house. How can she find a trustworthy person from the neighbourhood? In small groups participants were asked to discuss what the various personas might do in the situations described by the retirement stories. This resulted in both traditional and digitally supported solutions that showed how our participants would imagine or would recommend to deal with the situation.

Third Space with scenarios and retirement stories

The four personas and their retirement stories opened up a Third Space for discussion in which everybody could take a position, express themselves and explore solution scenarios. As the personas exhibited many traits of participants but also characteristics of marginalized groups they looked familiar and unfamiliar to our participants at the same time. “With these personas I could more or less identify myself.” (female, 68). They provided a common language and served as Alter Egos [29]. The retirement stories that took up various issues from the probes and interview material helped everybody to discuss the diverse problems and requirements of retirees without speaking about themselves or disclosing intimate information. The participants could argue from the perspective of a persona, they could also follow their own desires or feelings and project them onto a persona or critically comment on behaviours, without personally taking centre stage in the conversation. Our participants easily switched back and forth between “I would do…” and “Ursula should do…” while the researchers as moderators consistently talked and asked about the persona. In this way, diverse roles and perspectives were taken, explored and discussed.

In these discussions about how to get in touch with others, various notions of life in retirement and the associated issues were negotiated. It became obvious that the participants did not particularly aim for finding young persons to help them in everyday life, but they wished to meet peers to reflect their own situation, get inspired by others, use their personal skills, learn, share experiences and eventually meet in person. The desire to feel safe and close with people was most prominent and strategies for how to gradually develop trust were shared. The discussions about personas and their stories in this first participatory workshop broadened the collective understanding of retirement and its main issues. Figure 7 shows the result of a clustering of all aspects that emerged during the analysis phase. It also includes aspects that were identified in workshop 2, that will not be described here, using a game-like creative technique (“Metaphors” [30]).

Figure 7

Main issues in retirement.

5 Prototyping with Scenarios: Imagining Meeting People Online

After the analysis phase when we had formed a detailed understanding of aspects, practices and problems of retirement, we entered the design phase. Concrete design solutions had to be created and fleshed out. For this purpose, again scenarios were used, now in combination with paper prototypes. Paper prototypes help to visualize interaction with a software. They show screen by screen the main functionality and what information might be displayed or provided by users. Most often prototypes are made by designers who want to discuss the intended interaction design with potential users at an early stage of development [27].

In ParTec, several paper prototypes were prepared, each representing parts of the neighbourhood platform functionality. As our participants were not familiar with online platforms, the paper prototypes were meant to give a first impression. In workshop 3 the participants were asked to not only use and comment on them but also to extend and refine them. The interaction with the prototypes was embedded in ‘platform stories’ that had been derived from the retirement stories they knew from workshop 1. They took up the participants’ main topics of interest (Figure 7). Using the platform Klaus wants to find out about his personal skills and interests that allow him to become active and socially involved from home. Christiane uses the platform to find a trustworthy person from the neighbourhood to look after her flowers and her cat during vacation. Christiane also wants to find out more about her neighbourhood, discover new things and find people who share her interests. Now the personas met virtually on an online neighbourhood platform that was partly represented by the prototypes.

During the workshop, the participants were guided in groups of two or three along a ‘platform story’ using the respective paper prototype that introduced them to the design concepts of the platform. At pre-determined points in the story, they were asked for comments and ideas concerning functionality and interaction design: What options would they expect at some point? What other categories of information could they imagine? How should information be visually presented? What personal information would they want to find on the platform? Which forms of communication would they prefer to contact others on the platform? Tools like scissors, glue sticks, pens and post-its were provided on the table and the participants were encouraged to use them to modify the prototype and sketch their ideas.

Figure 8

Paper prototype: Visibility of personal data: Christiane wants Petra to see her name, personal description, interests and preferred contact channels, but not her physical address.

As we cannot give a detailed account of the entire discussions here, we will exemplarily describe an issue that emerged in all groups. The question of how to develop trust when meeting new people had already come up in the probes interviews: “I have to look someone into the eyes to decide whether I let them into my house.” (female 78). This desire for trust and safety had been modelled in the personas and their stories. Now it became evident in all platform stories and paper prototypes that when using an online platform everybody has to identify themselves. Discussing how to establish contact with an unknown person on the platform and how to develop trust, participants found that they needed basic information about the others. However, taking the perspective of ‘the others’, they realized that they would have to provide this kind of information about themselves, too. “If I want to know this about someone I have to provide that information about myself, too. That’s fair. Otherwise I’m a voyeur” (female, 67). Consequently, self-determination and control over one’s personal data were much discussed in all three groups. One participant emphasized: “If I were forced to reveal too much about myself, I would immediately quit the platform.” (female, 63). Based on these considerations, they decided how they wanted to handle their profile data. One group of participants developed a concept that allows a platform user to decide in considerable detail, which piece of personal information is to be disclosed to whom (Figure 8). Repeatedly they underlined that they expected the other users of the platform to be elderly people like themselves living in their neighbourhood so that there would be a chance to meet them in person. Their generally sceptical attitude towards virtual contacts persisted which had already been evident in the cultural probes and interviews.

Third Space with paper prototypes and platform stories

While during the analysis phase (CP, interviews, personas and retirement stories) our participants had introduced us to their everyday practices in retirement, workshop 3 required them to enter the world of designers and developers to a certain extent. As HCI and design researchers we had meant to offer them a good Third Space bridging the two worlds by platform stories and paper prototypes. While the stories sounded familiar and could easily be discussed, it turned out that the sketches on paper were no ‘common language’ they could immediately understand and use. Some of them mentioned that they felt less involved than in the previous workshops and needed much more time to get used to the design sketches and concepts. “That was the most difficult step for me. I needed a while to pick up and comprehend this kind of presentation.” (female, 63). These difficulties may also have occurred since the participants had never used an online social networks and none of them ever had thought about how software interfaces get designed.

The paper prototypes prepared for the platform stories had been fleshed out to various degrees for workshop 3. This made a difference in the three parallel group discussions. A very detailed design obviously inhibited the participants to describe their own ideas. Despite the handmade and modular character of the design elements the design already appeared to be finished to them. On the other hand, blanc pages and very open questions for design ideas led to rather abstract discussions. Often, the participants rather deliberated and discussed and hesitated to use the provided materials to visualize their own design concepts. Instead, the moderators had to transfer, sketch or note the participants’ comments and design ideas to modify the paper prototype. It seems that the Third Space we had meant to create lacked the necessary inbetweenness—it was ‘owned by the researchers’. Explaining the goals for workshop 3 and moderating the small groups we should have taken more time to introduce the techniques and should have encouraged or even trained them a bit to visualize their own desired concepts. As moderators it was hard to leave out terms and concepts like registration, login or profile that are common for web applications. Maybe we should have explained the relevant aspects of web design before or shown an example of a sketch for an interface that they knew.

Nevertheless, the platform stories motivated the participants to take the roles of different personas or imagine using the platform themselves. Taking the perspectives of different users of the platform they experienced the consequences of the design proposals. This made them reflect critically about the design solutions and think about alternatives, especially with regard to aspects of visibility and control of their personal data.

6 Digital Prototype: Experiencing the Interactive Platform

As a last step in our cooperation we presented the jointly developed design solutions in form of a digital prototype. Digital interactive prototypes are mainly used for testing usability. In our case the digital prototype was meant as a demonstrator that allowed us to check—or have the participants check—whether the participatory techniques had led to an appropriate understanding of their requirements and ideas for an online neighbourhood platform.

The demonstrator was programmed as a web application. The scenarios and design concepts that had resulted from workshop 3 and that mirrored the participants’ requirements and interests were combined and integrated into an overall information architecture. The interface and interaction design of the platform followed contemporary design approaches (Google Material Design^[2]) and was inspired by popular online applications, e. g. pinterest,^[3] and online services and websites for senior citizens.

The demonstrator highlighted aspects that had been explained and discussed by the participants throughout the research phase. It focused on meeting like-minded people and getting inspired by them, discovering new, interesting things by randomly browsing, and aimed for self-determination and data control according to the participants’ demands. After registering, the user encountered an entry page that offered a collection of topics that the participants had identified as interesting during the self-observation phase. Issues like home & gardening, politics, travelling, movies, music & literature, education, photography and health were each represented by an appealing image. After choosing a topic, diverse categories of information were displayed like people, experience reports, offers and requests that were related to the respective topic. The user could decide if they wanted to get in contact with someone who shared some interest or could browse the other offers. The main menu on top of every page led to a private area where users could administrate their settings. There they could determine the visibility of their data individually for each of their contacts or groups of contacts (Figure 9) according to the concept developed in the workshop before (Figure 8).

Figure 9

Individual visibility settings. Christiane allows Petra to see only her full name.

In workshop 4 the participants were guided through the demonstrator following a platform story. They had to register as new members, choose a topic of interest, post or answer an offer or a request. Along the way they met the familiar personas who now appeared as members of the digital neighbourhood. Then they had to log off and register as one of the personas who tries to get into contact with other members. They had to edit the persona’s profile and manage the visibility of the personal data. Using the platform, they were asked to comment on what they saw and did. As mouse and keyboard always were shared by two participants, they had to coordinate their actions and discuss what to do. This made thinking aloud more natural for them. The moderating researcher questioned them as to what extent they found the ideas they had developed in the participatory process were mirrored by the system.

The participants were quite content about the results of our cooperative process in analysis and design. They felt understood: “Many suggestions have been incorporated. I find myself in the platform.” (female, 66). They also appreciated the way how the digital content was presented and structured. “I really like the way how the platform is built: You have an overview of main topics with corresponding posts. You can also find people who are interested in a topic. That’s a nice approach. It definitely offers a new access to the neighborhood.” (female, 64). Using the demonstrator, they were able to imagine what a digital neighborhood platform could do for them. As a consequence, they finally became interested in online platforms: “I just had no idea about platforms before, … now I can imagine entering my profile data here.” (female, 63).

The enthusiasm about the project in general faded when they realized that no full platform would be implemented. Although the scientific goal of the project had been introduced at the beginning and mentioned throughout the process, the participants were quite disappointed, even upset, that the platform would not be available online. Over time they had become so engaged with understanding their own requirements and with the design of the platform that they had forgotten that our project focussed on the evaluation of participatory techniques with older adults and that the digital platform had only been an exemplary case of application. “It’s a pity … I’m not a crazy Internet user, but… if this platform existed I would be there.” (male, 75)

Although the participants had no prior experiences with social network sites, they found their way through the platform without any serious problems. In contrast to workshop 3, their critical statements and suggestions for improvement were made with much more self-confidence. This was an indication that by the participatory process they had learned they could have a say in technology development and could critically and constructively contribute to it. “We had many opportunities to nag and suggest (…) This was expected from us and I think we really did it.” (male, 75) Quite obviously, the participants had accepted their double role as experts of retirement and as co-designers of the platform. Their disappointment showed their strong identification with the project result and the co-ownership they felt for the platform. The fact that the content and functionality mirrored the participants’ main issues in retirement that had basically been derived from the self-observation phase certainly added to this feeling.

7 Conclusion

The participatory techniques used and studied in ParTec offered various opportunities for mutual learning, exchange and negotiations between the everyday world of the participants and the professional realm of design. Alternating between joint work with the participants and phases of interpretation, consolidation and material preparation by the project team, participants and researchers built a common and multifaceted understanding of what it means to be retired and how technology—in this case an online neighbourhood platform—has to be designed in order to support retirees in dealing with the challenges of this particular phase of life. In cooperation, we learned about requirements and developed design concepts which led to a demonstrator that mirrored the participants’ interests, demands and suggestions.

The cultural probes technique played an important role in this participatory process. As artefacts the cultural probes provided a simple and at the same time extremely rich common language for cooperation in the project. The questions and documentation tasks in the probes demonstrated the researchers’ genuine interest in everyday life practices of the participants and helped in combination with the interviews to develop a deep common understanding of retirement as a phase of life. The appealing design of the material conveyed our respect and appreciation to the participants. Cultural probes also helped to establish a relationship of mutual trust in the initial phase of the project which was extremely important for the success of the entire participatory process. The importance of a trusting atmosphere and non-hierarchical relationships among the researchers as well as with the participants were mentioned by all participants during the final feedback session. “I did not feel like a ‘study subject’ but as a subject! I had the impression that we had an egalitarian structure (also among the researchers) … otherwise I would not have opened up so much. I would not have gotten that much involved.” (female, 63).

The participants felt inspired by the probes to think about their life situation and talk to others about it. Sometimes they were surprised or excited about the insights they gained about themselves and their everyday life. During the two weeks of self-observation, they became aware of pleasant and unpleasant aspects of their current situation which provided a basic sensitivity for their needs and demands.

For requirements elicitation in professional contexts it is advisable to meet and interview employees at their work place (“contextual interview” [14]). At work, the observation and interview can follow work processes and routine activities, the conversation can refer to tacit knowledge hidden in the practices and to objects that turn out to be relevant. This kind of observation cannot be done in private contexts. Our project shows that self-documentation and reflection triggered by cultural probes provide a perfect substitute, because they make people aware of their everyday practices, considerations and attitudes. The cultural probes informed the researchers and helped the participants in the follow-up interviews to remember relevant aspects and details of their everyday life. The probes preserved the context and kept it present for both, the researcher and the participant. As artefacts they worked as ‘boundary objects’ [28], [15] between private life and the discussions in preparation of design decisions.

Another important benefit of cultural probes was that they provided a sound empirical basis for all further artefacts in our cooperation with participants: personas, stories and prototypes. Personas recombined attributes of the participants and thus represented plausible, representative examples of older adults, with which the participants could identify themselves to some extent. The retirement stories took up main issues in retirement as they had been described in the probes and interviews. Personas and stories became central reference points and provided a perfect Third Space throughout the entire research and design process. By the continuous reference to personas and stories in all workshops (except the creative ‘Metaphors’ workshop 2) the requirements and needs of the participants were permanently in focus and effective and the design was oriented accordingly. Our way of telling stories with gaps that were to be filled in discussion by small groups of participants invited identification and imagination on the safe ground of their own experiences. Even if the transition from analysis to design using paper prototypes in workshop 3 initially seemed difficult, the contextualisation by platform stories helped the participants to understand in which direction the design was heading and what purpose design elements served.

At the outset of the project, participants had doubted that they could make any contribution to technology design. In the course of the project and experiencing the various participatory techniques they realized that (and how) technology is made by humans and they saw they could have a voice and could make relevant contributions. They saw their needs and ideas were being transferred into an new technology that made interesting offers to them. The participants’ active involvement substantially transformed the initial design focus of the project. The project had started with the idea of creating an intergenerational neighbourhood platform for mutual exchange and support between young and old. In the end a demonstrator for a digital neighbourhood system was designed where like-minded (older) people can mutually inspire each other to actively shape, share and enjoy their retirement. This change of focus was triggered by the reflections during the probes-based self-observation experience they shared with us and the discussions that followed in the participatory process.