Combating Rape Culture

Research Through Cultural Probe Kits

August 2017

Cultural probe kits are a design research method developed to gain deeper insight into people’s daily lives, thoughts and interactions¹. They are typically kits made up of a series of activities that participants are asked to complete over a period of time.

I developed cultural probe kits to collect visual information for the project What Do You Need. The kits were designed around three themes:

• Trust in dominant systems for adequately dealing with sexual violence (i.e. the criminal justice system, college and university sexual assault policies, mainstream media reporting)

• Experiences with microaggressions and ‘everyday impacts’ of rape culture. (Note: the focus of this theme is not instances of sexual violence, but rather everyday instances of rape culture)

• Speculative visioning – tools for combatting rape culture. Objects of empowerment in the fight against rape culture.

The activities included: word association, drawing and writing exercises, and taking photos.

See the final project here.

¹Gaver, B., Dunne, T., & Pacenti, E. (1999). Design: Cultural Probes. Interactions, 6(1), 21–29. https://doi.org/10.1145/291224.291235