Woven Cultural Probes as Enablers for Multisensorial Design and Collaborative Practices
Alexandra Matz, Laura Filippa Ferrarello · 2023
The importance of addressing and activating some or all human senses while engaging with digital products has been established: designers offer haptic feedback in digital games, implement aural ways of enabling visually impaired users to navigate a website or interactions with products or services in varying light or colour settings. There is nonetheless little research yet as to how designers of products and services working mainly digitally – and not generally exposed to multi-sensorial engagement in their work – might be motivated to bring such experience into their work, and what benefits might result therefrom. The presented research aims to help fill this gap by proposing that the engagement of the human senses with woven objects as cultural probes can stimulate new, collaborative ways of experiencing, thinking, and creating in the research and design processes of designers who mainly work in digital environments, e.g., service or interaction designers.