Designing a cultural probe to investigate the secret lives of graffiti artists.
Key Words: UX Research, Cultural Probe, Qualitative Methods, Individual Exercise
Cultural probes are a unique qualitative research tool thatusually consist of open-ended activities for participants. They help us learnmore about their daily lives and environment and start conversations by bringinginsights that may be harder to come by with more traditional means. In this exercise,I created a probe to explore the lives of graffiti artists.
1 week
Given the criminal nature of most graffiti, graffiti artists are often not too inclined to come out and share their livelihoods to the public. For this exercise, I sought out to develop a cultural probe that has potential to give us a look into the hidden lives of graffiti artists— from their motivations and intentions behind their works, private and public forms of expression, as well as other insights traditional research methods struggle to dig into.
I was particularly interested in the culture of graffiti artists from different regions of the world. While graffiti culture appears to share traits across the globe, the lived experiences of individuals—whether it’s political, social, or cultural issues— shapes the graffiti culture regionally
The following sketches are taken from my initial ideation pages:
This project centered around improving the concert livestreaming experience through implementation of emerging technology. In our case, it was holograms. Findings from early interviews and preliminary sketching led us to set a few goals to focus on for this project.
These included:
The probe is shipped in a box with all the activities packaged in individual flat-packed boxes. Each of the boxes is labeled with a day for when to complete the activity. The activities are spaced out daily to ensure attention is focused on that day’s activity.
At the top, a disposable camera, along with a map of their home region can be found. These components are used throughout their journey in multiple activities. Several activities have the artist take photos and document their lives. The map is used to document the location-based activities. Each activity comes with different stickers that are to be placed on the location appropriate for the activity. From the camera, we get a view from their own eyes into their lives, and the map helps illustrate their journey within a physical space.
This activity has the graffiti artists mark their personal tag on a typical nametag sticker. By doing this, I hope to evoke a sense of what it means to be a part of that persona through the other activities. Another goal of this simple activity is to instill a sense of security and comfort to graffiti artists while completing these activities knowing they are operating under the name on nametag.
How I Work the next activity has the artists take a picture of their favorite tools to use while painting as well as their favorite location to paint. They are also asked to place a sticker on the map of this location. This activity is used to provide insight on how artists like to work.
This activity has artists create three small pieces on postal stickers (a common form of graffiti known as sticker bombing). They are then asked to place these stickers somewhere around town. They are also asked to take pictures of each of the stickers in their final locations as well as mark on the map where they had placed them. With only three stickers, this exercise aims to provide insight onto where and how artists choose to spread their messages.
This activity asks artist to find a piece from their favorite graffiti artist around town, take a picture, describe how the piece speaks to them, and mark on the map where they found it. The goal of this activity is to identify how artists within the graffiti community inspire each other.
This activity asks the artist to identify the piece in their area that speaks the most to them, take a picture, identify why the piece speaks to them, and mark it on the map. This activity is rooted in determining the motivations and influence artists have on the greater community.
The final activity asks the artist to identify their dream painting spot, take a picture of the location, design the piece they would like to paint there, and mark it on the map. This activity investigates the aspirations of the artist, as well as motivations for painting.
This exercise presented me with a number of unique challenges— many which did not present themselves until it came to actually sketching potential ideas. Firstly, when dealing with a group such as graffiti artists, there are a number of factors that need to be considered. First of all, while this is a community that speaks publicly through their works, it’s almost always done under cloak of secrecy. Secondly, most often graffiti is done illegally. The goal was not to encourage an illegal act, but rather to investigate how these forbidden artists attempt to speak to the greater community. Graffiti is often the voice of underrepresented and marginalized communities and research in this area has potential to bring the issues at play to the surface.
Given the opportunity to further refine this project, I would like to dig further into the concept of community within graffiti culture. However, previously discussed limitations make this difficult, and other forms of research may be required to further progress in this area. Furthermore, I would like to investigate motivations to a deeper level, and really understand what traits define the graffiti culture of their region.
Overall, I believe this probe has the capability to provide valuable insight into the lives of graffiti artists and their work. Through the reflective exercises, they are encouraged to identify key influential factors, and who they are and would like to be as an artist.