PRINTED

Printed materials are an important consideration in designing of probes because they serve multiple purposes.  Probes can be made up entirely of printed materials, electronic items can be repackaged in them for ease-of-use and they can accompany probes as instructions.  “Everyday” printed forms like calendars, diaries, notepads, postcards etc. might be adapted as probes since their familiarity might make them more easy-to-use, and they might require less annotation than novel items.  Printed materials also tend to be more adaptable to suit a range of purposes, unlike electronic items commonly used as probes, like cameras and sound recorders.  Using the graphic elements of everyday print items and methods particular to a culture might also give probes a characteristic of being both vernacular and novel simultaneously–that is to say, both approachable and unique.

ROUTINES / RITUALS

If printed materials account for a significant portion of the “WHAT” involved in creating probes, routines and rituals might be an entry point in determining the “HOW”.  Each household is likely to perform a series of daily tasks related to water management like collecting, redirecting and purifying water, as well as water use-related tasks such as cleaning walkways, watering plants and boiling water.  Similarly, there might be a set of daily practices more conventionally associated with ritual that people undertake in parallel, such as doing pooja, tracing rangoli, burning incense etc.  Some of these activities might share common aims, like a desire for purity.  Questioning the relationship between actions that are more commonly associated with routine and those more associated with ritual might be a point of departure in designing probes that engage these common aims.

WAITING & SUBCONSCIOUS ACTIVITY

The routines and rituals associated with water use are tempered by periods of waiting, ranging from the time it takes for the geyser to heat water (1 to 15 min) to the time spent waiting for the corporation truck to fill household tanks with water (1 week).  Many householders complain that the time spent on daily tasks limit their engagement with spaces outside the domestic sphere.  By thinking about the time spans of these waiting periods and the activities that might be occuring simultaneously within them, probes can be designed to engage householders in creative tasks within these periods of inactivity.  Such a probe might elicit some of the underlying subconscious activity that might accompany an otherwise mudane task.  Taking advantage of waiting time might also be a means of having people respond “without thinking too much”, for probes that might require a more abstract response.

OBJECTS OF EVERYDAY USE

There are at least a couple of ways that everyday objects might be engaged in designing probes that will fall seamlessly into peoples’ daily routines. The first would be to find out what objects are already involved (Khambas, pitchers, glasses etc.) and create probes designed to replace them with similar objects that are meant to encourage a range of uses that go beyond those of the original object.  An example might be a drinking glass onto which the user writes down the sounds hear when they bring it close to their ear.  The second is to create a probe that extends the capability of an object in by specifying its placement in order to generate a novel interaction at a specific point of use.  An example might be a sound recorder that is clipped onto a faucet to record the sounds of washing.  One way of thinking about designing these two types of probes is to look at these everyday objects and try to specify some characteristics that might be more related to peoples’ perception of them rather than the shared characteristics with which we commonly associate them.  For instance, a copper vessel might be called “medicative” since many people use them for the medicinal qualities of copper, and not only to store water.