Tricky Design Probes: Triggering Reflection on Design Research Methods

Design research methods are increasingly used as ready-made recipes for success in a variety of fields and multidisciplinary teams. Yet as any tools, they shape the gaze, attitudes, and behaviors of designers. Moreover their generic nature tends to obscure the specific situations in which they were created. In reaction, grounding our work in adversarial design, we propose four tricky probes: believable design tools, which appear to be innocuous, but progressively engage designers in crossing boundaries of what should be acceptable. This is done by slowly derailing design research activities, leading to trigger reflection on the part of designers on their beliefs, practice, and the tools they use. Our probes raise issues at the intersection of design research and gender in urban service design, such as the use of pre-made algorithms to understand gendered patterns in urban movements.