Designing cultural probes to create a space for dialogue around home chores


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Creator/Artist: Ketaki Kshirsagar

Category: Interaction Design

Document: P2 Project

Batch: 2022-2024

Source: India,   IDC IIT Bombay

Period:  2019-onwards

Medium: Report pdf

Supervisor: Prof. Girish Dalvi


Detailed Description

A considerable amount of emotional, physical, and mental labor is expended at work and home by members of a household. Though the effort spent at work is comparable, cultural studies and the National Survey Office data show a contrast in the time and effort spent on house chores and caregiving by working men and women. Even in households with both partners working, the domestic responsibilities, involvement in chores, expectations, and roles associated with each of them seem imbalanced. Participation patterns in home chores haven’t been able to keep up with the evolving participation in work. Scoped to urban Indian families with working partners, this work explores the role of design in creating a discursive space to dwell on the dynamics of a household. The project is a set of experimental artifacts, or cultural probes, designed to engage with a specific sociocultural group (which is an urban Indian household with working partners between 45 and 55 years of age) and allow members of the household to engage with their own domesticity through different mediums. The objective is to possibly seed thought and spark dialogue around domestic chores and, through the artefacts experience, alternate ways of looking at and performing them.