Envisioning probe kit: creativity and storytelling to capture the inner thoughts of people

During the last few years the interest in Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) fields has spread towards wireless and mobile devices which can support activities in everyday life. Designing for play, learning and awareness is becoming more and more a factual aspects of research willing to meet users' needs. In such a broaden range of possible applications for the new ubiquitous and pervasive technologies, classical HCI methods for revealing efficiency and effectiveness of an innovative product are no more adequate. Taking into consideration human experience during the interaction with ICT devices needs a more creative and multidisciplinary design approach. This work was developed within a European project called MobileMAN whose aim was to develop a self-organizing and infrastructure-less network with the potentiality of the well-known MANET (Mobile Ad hoc NETwork) paradigm. Our goal in the MobileMAN project was to investigate with potential end users, the possible applications useful for everyday activities that could work with this emerging technology. We then tried to adopt a more creative and multidisciplinary approach, inspired by the "Probe Kit" developed at the Royal College of London.