Cultural Probes
In the Implementation section (under Working With Others: Communication), we suggest a range of possible ways of promoting and engaging people in the project as it develops. Whilst many of the strategies for engagement and collecting ideas are likely to produce good ideas you should also consider soliciting feedback from stakeholders in more imaginative ways - for example by issuing a small number of disposable cameras and asking them to take photos of things on campus that interest them or get them excited. Glasgow Caledonian University used this approach when planning the fit out of the Saltire Centre and got useful subliminal information, on seating preferences for example, from the photos that were taken by students using the current resources such as the learning café.
If you have the time and resources you should also make extensive behavioural observations of the way in which current resources and facilities are used. This is not only useful to inform the project but it enables any post-project evaluation, by using similar observational techniques, to include the study of some of the softer cultural impacts of the new facilities.
A tool worth considering to improve your understanding of the softer cultural impact of the project is social network analysis which, by comparing the diversity of pre- and post-project human interactions, can show who is talking to whom and whether the complexity and extent of interactions has increased - often a good indicator of the extent of creativity (see the Medici Effect32).
