While user centred design explores the main 'action' level needs of users, how does one explore the unknown and unarticulated 'motivation' level needs?
Contextual Innovation is a systematic multidisciplinary process of inquiry that enables us to understand new (and particularly, emerging) market 'needs' and develop entirely novel, more useful and effective products and services.
在以用户为中心的设计探寻用户在主要的'行为'层次上的需求时，他怎样去探寻未知的和难以言明的'动机'层次的需求呢？
Contextual Innovation（情景创新）是一个系统的多学科的调查过程，他让我们理解新兴市场的'需求'，并开发全新的、更为有用、有效的产品和服务。

INTRODUCTION导言：
When designing for users who belong to different cultures, the most critical task is to find the gaps between the cultural ideals and cultural practices. "The places where the tensions are strongest between those two things are the most interesting. They're also often places where technologies are very successful."
It is, however, no mean task to understand the cultural ideals and almost impossible to gauge the gaps between ideal and practice. Using techniques from a largely Western, 'developed' or 'leading' market cultural context and trying to apply them to a completely different 'emerging' market cultural context can often lead to very misleading insights.
当为那些隶属不同文化的用户而设计时，最重要的任务就是去发现文化理想和文化实践上的差距。"这两个事物碰撞最激烈的地方就是最有趣的，也是技术很成功的地方。"
然而，理解文化理想并不是普通的任务，而且评估理想和实践之间的差距也几乎不可能。试图把完全西方的，"发达"或"领导型"市场环境下的技术应用到一个完全不同的"新兴"市场的文化环境中，往往会导致错误的认识。

An 'emerging' market's cultural difference is compounded by the fact that the nature of the economy and stage of development of these countries has little similarity with that of a 'developed' or 'leading' market.
In an 'emerging' market, the largest volume of consumers are at the bottom of the pyramid. These consumers are often illiterate or functionally literate and also have very limited cash to spend.
发展中国家的经济实质和发展阶段与"发达"或"领导型"市场并不相似，这一事实加剧了"新兴"市场的文化差异。
在"新兴"市场，大量的消费者处于金字塔的底端。这些消费者通常是文盲或者没多少文化，而且消费水平也很有限。

In order to arrive at new product and service concepts, getting to understand the needs and preferences of users is the best source of ideas. We, therefore, use a research and concept generation methodology called contextual innovation, that allows us to gather deep insights about user needs.
Contextual innovation, rooted in the social sciences (cultural anthropology, sociology, psychology), help us study the 'situated' behaviors, goals, intentions and thoughts of the potential users of future products and services contextually. 为了得到新产品和服务的概念，逐渐去理解用户的需求和喜好是概念产生的最好来源。所以，我们运用名叫情景创新的调查和概念产生方法，这种方法可以让我们更深入的洞察用户需求信息。
情景创新，来源于社会科学（文化人类学，社会学，心理学），它帮助我们研究未来相关产品和服务的潜在用户在"情境中"的行为，目标，动机和思想。

METHODS方法：
Cultural Probes
Contextual innovation is largely about ensuring the availability of 'deep' culturally situated insights about user needs. These insights cannot be obtained in the course of a 2 hour data gathering interview and often not even in a 2 day contextual inquiry exercise.
Traditional ethnographic techniques, on the other hand, provide techniques for watching people at their activities over considerable periods of time. This is often not possible in either office or domestic settings because of the intrusive nature of the technique.
In addition, it is not always possible to find out what people 'feel' through an observation study. What is really important to them and what is not?
文化探查(Cultural Probes)
情景创新主要是确保对用户需求认识的有效性，这种认识是"深"植于文化中的。这些认识并不是2小时访谈数据的收集过程，甚至也不能在2天的情景调查练习就得到。
另一方面，传统的人种学提供的技术是在相当长的时间周期内观察人类行为的技术。因为这项技术本身的干扰特性，在办公室或家庭环境中常常是不可能运用的。
另外，往往不可能通过一次的观察研究就发现人们的"感受"。什么对于他们来说是真正重要的而什么是不重要的？

"Cultural probes are one way to access environments that are difficult to observe directly and also to capture more of this 'felt life'".[4]
Cultural probes were first used by designers at the Royal College of Art, London.
Cultural Probes are not analytical tools but are meant to provide inspirational insights that 'reflect' the local culture of participants. "文化探查是一种方法，它可以进入难以直接观察和难以捕捉更多生活感受的环境",文化探查首次由伦敦皇家艺术学院的设计师使用。
文化探查不是分析工具，而是试图提供能"反映"出对参与者本土文化的创意性见解。
Cultural Probes Used for Contextual Innovation Projects in India

'Rasas' and The Emotion Ticket
We designed this cultural probe in the form of 'emotion tickets'. These were designed to resemble cinema 'tickets'.
These tickets were categorized into the nine 'rasas' or emotions used traditionally in Indian performing arts. These 'rasas' are: shingara (desire/romance) hasya (mirth), karuna (pathos or sadness), rudra (anger or fury), veer (valorous or heroic), bhayanak (fear or terror), vibhatsa (disgust), adhbuta (wonder or surprise) and shanta (peace or tranquility). Each 'rasa' was expressed through appropriate images and dialogues from Hollywood films, in the booklet.
Participants for this study were employees of HFI, located in the Iowa and Mumbai offices. They recorded their comments for a week.
The idea was to have users articulate their feelings when interacting/using any technology/ technology product, by recording it using the appropriate emotion ticket. They recorded the reason they felt a particular emotion, what technology or technology product they used or interacted with and when did the trigger happen.
在印度将文化探查运用于情景创新的项目
令人愉快的体验（印度语Rasas）和情感标签（The Emotion Ticket）
我们以"情感标签"的形式设计了这次文化探查，这些设计类似电影"票"。
这些标签被分为九种"体验（Rasas）"或者在印度传统的行为艺术中使用的情感。这些"体验"是：shingara(愿望/浪漫)，hasya(高兴)，karuna (痛苦或悲伤), rudra (愤怒或暴怒), veer (勇敢或英雄主义的)，bhayanak (害怕或恐怖)，vibhatsa (厌恶), adhbuta (奇迹或惊奇) and shanta (和睦或宁静)。
小册子中每种"体验"通过好莱坞影片中适宜的图像和对话来表达。
这项研究的参与者是HFI的员工，办公室坐落在爱荷华州和孟买。他们记录下自己为期一周的言论。
其想法是让用户在使用技术或者与科技产品互动的时候说出自己的感受，运用合适的情感标签记录下来。他们记录下感受到特殊情感时的原因，他们使用的什么技术或与什么科技产品进行交互，它是什么时候引发的。

Results The broad categories into which the triggers for the emotional reactions could be classified, were: internet/sms/telephones, entertainment, technology- delivering and failing (both sides of the coin), security/disaster, philosophy.
The Indian participants had almost equal number of comments running across all 9 emotions.
The participants from Iowa had most comments for 'courage', 'fear' and 'desire' and very little for the rest.
The American participants' comments when organized by frequency of comments within each category differed considerably from that of the Indian participants.
Several commonly used cultural dimensions were also validated.
结果 引发情感反应的原因可以分为几大类：
网络/短信/电话，娱乐，技术--发送和失败（硬币的正反面），安全/灾难，哲学。
印度参与者们涉及到9种情感的评论数量都差不多。来自爱荷华州的参与者多数的评论是"勇敢"、"恐惧"、"欲望"，有很少一部分是休息。
美国参与者们的评论按照每个体验类别的评论频率组织起来时，就与印度参与者的评论频率有很大的不同。
许多一般性运用的文化尺度也是有效的。

The emotion tickets offered the following advantages:
-Incorporated local pop culture icons as part of the ticket design and thus could be easily localized.
-The informality and 'fun' value of the tickets made users less defensive and thus give more frank answers.
-In India where people are uncomfortable with talking about themselves the emotion tickets managed to break through the fa?ade and elicit personal information.
-They provided both macro level insights about power distance, individualism etc. and micro level insights about preferences and dislikes etc.
The next step would be to validate the cross cultural applicability of this form of 'cultural probe' as well as to explore finer grain analysis of the 'rasas' by decomposing each 'rasa' into its constituent 'bhavas' or moods.
Emotion tickets were also used to explore the 'feelings' of users of a proposed low cost ATM.
情感标签有以下几个优点：
- 将本地流行文化图标合并成标签设计的一部分，从而可以简单地本地化。
- 标签的非正式性和"娱乐"价值使用户抵触情绪较小，从而作出更真实坦白的回答。
- 在印度人们不喜欢谈及自身，情感标签设法突破这种情况，引出个人信息。
- 它可以提供关于权力距离，个人主义等等最大程度上的认知，以及喜好和厌恶等等方面微小层次上的认知。
下一步是证实这种形式的"文化探查"的跨文化适用性，将每种"体验"分解成其组成成分"通过语言、体态以及面部的细微变化来传达歌舞"或心情来探求对"体验"好的细小的分析。
情感标签也用于探求低成本ATM用户的"感觉"。

Other probes being experimented with
Jungian Archetype Folk Probes
其他文化探查正在使用卡尔·荣格的民间原型探查 进行实验

This method has been designed to make use of archetype folk characters rooted in the Chinese culture and to have users transfer those archetypal characteristics to other contexts.
This objective is to understand deeper associations that Chinese users form about the subject being studied and related entities.
The method entails using little pewter statues of characters from Chinese folk tales. These characters are very well known amongst the Chinese population. The statues (10 in number) are placed in front of the users and they are asked to label them. The labels are already provided (and consist of all the entities being studied). The users have to simply match a label with a statue, depending on their preference.
Once the labeling is done, it is possible to probe the associations demonstrated by the labeling, as well as the relationship between the various entities(as constructed by the users) .
Exploring archetypal associations in a 'playful' and projective mode helps elicit unfiltered and deep responses from normally reticent Chinese users.
这种方法是利用植根于中国文化的民间特征原型，让用户将那些原型的特征转换为其他背景。这一目标是理解关于所研究的主题和相关事物的中国用户形态，这种方法运用中国民间传说中的人物白蜡雕像。这些人物在中国非常有名。雕像（10个）被放置在用户前方并要求贴上标签。标签已事先提供了（由所研究的事物组成）。用户根据自己的偏好简单的将标签与头像匹配。一旦作完标签，就可以探查出标签所示的联想以及不同事物之间的关系就成为可能（由用户构建的）。以一种"十分有趣的"，心理投射的方式探索原型的联想将有助于从一般较沉默寡言的中国用户那里引出没有过滤过的深层次的反应。这些是基本的假设。

CONCLUSION 总结
Contextual innovation as a method, allows designers to access the unarticulated and largely unknown needs of users. This is of great significance in emerging markets where there is a 'fortune at the bottom of the pyramid'.
情景创新作为一种方法，让设计师了解到用户不易说清楚的和大量不为人知的需求。这在新兴市场非常重要，那里有"金字塔底部的财富"。新兴市场的用户需要创新的，买得起的产品，服务和商业模式。这种创新的驱动力就是设计师驾驭新兴市场文化精神的能力。

Users in emerging markets need innovative and affordable products, services and business models. What drives this innovation is the designer's ability to navigate the cultural psyche of an emerging market. Traditionally used data gathering methods such as interviewing and contextual inquiry are not enough to provide inspirational insights. Methods borrowed from ethnography and sociology, on the other hand, provide the designer with some important means of achieving this end.
Cultural probes are one set of techniques that make it possible to gain inspirational insights about the 'felt' world of the user.
Designing for new and specially, emerging markets require designers to move a step up the design process and acquire skills to work with the 'unknown'. In other words, work in a pre user centred design phase where one needs to know 'how' to ask the questions, in order to get a glimpse of the possible 'answers' or concepts.
传统的数据收集方法，如访谈和上下文询问都不足以提供颇具灵感的创意。而另一方面，从人种学和社会学移植过来的方法为设计师提供了一些获得创意的重要方法。文化探查是一种技术，它可以获得有关用户"感觉"世界中有灵感的想法。
为新的特别是为新兴市场设计需要设计师加快设计过程，需要有与"未知"事物打交道的能力。换句话说，在一个以用户为中心的设计阶段前期工作，设计师为了大致得到可能的"答案"或者概念，得知道"怎样"问问题。

References
1. Del Galdo, E., and Nielsen J, Anderson, International UserInterfaces. John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1996.
2. Gannon Martin, Understanding Global Cultures. Sage Publications, 1994.
3. Hall Edward, Beyond Culture, Doubleday Anchor Books.
4. Alan Dix, Design Focus: Cultural probes
5. Gaver, W.H., Hooker, B. and Dunne, A., The Presence Project, London: Dept. of Interaction Design, 1999

About the Author

Apala Lahiri Chavan,
MA, MSc, CUA
Managing Director
HFI India, Pvt. LTD.
Course Instructor

Apala is without question the most experienced usability professional in India. Before HFI she operated ZindaGUI which was at that time the only specialized usability firm in India. Since joining HFI in 1999 she has been the entrepreneurial leader of the operation in India; growing it to its current incredible strength and capability. She has lead hundreds of projects including expert reviews, structural design, localization, standards, and detailed design. She has also bought hundreds of stylish outfits.

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