Tactics for Designing Probes to Explore Parents’ Differing Perspectives on Family Technology Use

Abstract

Experiences of technology use in everyday family life can be complex. In particular, tensions can arise when parents have differing perspectives on their family's technology use. This paper describes design tactics we used to create a probe collection that successfully supported explorations of these differing perspectives, and to uncover the tensions involved whilst remaining sensitive to any existing conflict. The tactics created opportunities for conversation between parents and to shift their individual perspectives. These tactics helped to raise the awareness sets of parents' had of each other's perspectives on their family's technology use. Unexpected insights emerged that even surprised our participants, when they were asked to invert their point of view to imagine how their technologies might experience domestic life. Furthermore, deeper insights emerged when participants' responses to individual probes were viewed together, as a collection.