The study was completed by seven older Australians, each a member of the University of the Third Age (U3A), recruited via a posting about the cultural probe study in their local chapter's newsletter. As part of a larger research partnership between RMIT University and U3A Network Victoria, Shaping Connections, invitations to express interest in the study were sent to members in the South-east of Melbourne, Victoria, from Kingston, Cranbourne, Frankston, Glen Eira, and Bayside local chapters. Based on a member profile survey conducted by the Victorian Network, we note 75% of members are women, predominately from 71 to 75 (27%) and 66-70 (24%) age groups, with 48% having obtained a degree or higher compared to 24% for the general population, and 31% of survey respondents living alone (Szwed,). Regarding the cultural probe study, the demographics of the member profile reflected participants well, with an average age of 68 years old (M = 76.29, SD = 8.50), respondents were primarily women (6 women, one man), while education and living conditions were not evaluated, all resided in the south-east of Melbourne and were members of one of the local chapters engaged.
As the study focused on technology use, hobbies, social; habits, and preferences for social connection, participants were invited to discuss these aspects. For example, almost all respondents noted a "regular" level of technology use and skill, with only one suggesting they were at a "beginner" level. All owned a mobile phone, with at least three a table or laptop. All completed the TechPH scale (Anderberg et al.,) showing a reasonable overall level of interest and appreciation of technology across the respondents, with low anxiety. When discussing their interests and hobbies, many indicated their involvement in classes with their responding U3A chapters, such as Genealogy, Book club, social studies, archaeology, or photography, alongside traveling around Australia or spending time with family. Regarding how this time with others was spent, almost all preferred regular, in-person catch-ups, whether for a meal, coffee, or walking, as long as it was focused on talking and listening. Using the Lubben Social Network Scale (Lubben and Gironda,) to determine their social engagement, respondents indicated similar levels of social engagement with family and friends across the board. The following backgrounds serve to contextualize each participant:
Sally: With her son moving in with his family during the pandemic, Sally spends her days helping to look after her grandchildren, preparing meals and watching television together. Most mornings, she plays Pokemon Go on a walk before breakfast, alongside hip exercises to reduce her ongoing bursitis.
Joan: As a retiree who volunteers at the local visitor information center, Joan lives with her husband on the coast. Her days during the study were spent taking daily walks, completing gardening tasks, and supporting friends and family through in-person chats and online calls.
Olivia: Due to an immune system badly impaired from the Guillain Barre syndrome, Olivia is housebound and requires daily support from her carers. During the study, she noted how much more accessible her interests had become, such as weekly church and football games.
Emma: A retiree at 66, Emma enjoys working part-time as a local golf clubhouse gardener and lives in a share house. While looking after her garden and spending time with friends; she also writes short children's books and helps look after neighbors' children.
Mary: Continuing to work into her late seventies, Mary has set up a home office during the lockdowns but prefers to go into the office to see the other accountants in her unit. At home, with her husband, she enjoys learning and using new devices while also regularly walking their puppy.
Claire: With her partners separated from her in Canada during the Australian lockdowns, she keeps in contact with him and her family primarily online and in calls. As an avid traveler, she spent her days learning Spanish while preparing to sell her house in Australia.
Robert: Previously an IT worker, Robert remains engaged with technology through his passion for cameras, though he also provides technical support at his U3A. Outside this, he enjoys spending his time following creative pursuits such as photography and painting, being with his partner and like-minded individuals that join the photography class he teaches.
The cultural probe kit contained three main components:a social activity diary, an accompanying workbook, and a collection of photovoice task prompts with an instant-digital camera:alongside supporting documentation and instructions (Figure 1). Intended for remote and self-sufficient use by participants, all components were printed and sent to participants. In addition, the kit included necessary stationery such as pens and pencils, spare photo papers for the instant-digital camera, and a charging cable in case the camera did not last the week. The optional exit interview was conducted via online conferencing software, such as Zoom, or via a phone call, per participants' requests. As this article discusses the analysis of the photovoice responses, social diary entries, and exit interview transcript, the development and resultant materials from these elements will be discussed. It is also important to note that as part of the development process, the probe kit was iterated multiple times and tested with a volunteer U3A officer. Reflecting the approach of Mikus et al., this independent project advisor was consulted to ensure the kit's components, terminology, and distribution were appropriate, potentially increasing engagement and connection. In particular, this involved making changes to language and the text size and replacing activities foreseen not to resonate with this audience, with the tester refining the probe into a more accessible, intuitive, and helpful format.
Developed initially by health promotion researchers (Wang and Burris,), Photovoice is a technique that involves placing cameras into participants' hands to help them record, reflect upon, and communicate issues of concern (Budig et al.,). Serving as a powerful medium for capturing everyday life, the photovoice component of the cultural probe kit prompted participants to consider and reflect on Social Technology, Social Networks, Wellbeing, and Social Practices. The camera provided to participants, a Kodak Printomatic Instant Print Camera, was intended to provide a novel and interactive platform for capturing imagery, chosen due to its ability to automatically print photos with point-and-shoot ease, as well as record them digitally via an SD card. The cue cards were developed to support participants in considering the context of the study:the ongoing lockdowns in Victoria and social interactivity:posing questions and examples that sought to resonate with the situations facing respondents. Each topic responded to their established concepts, such as social technology that captures any technology that facilitates social interaction and has some form of communication capability. This saw a participant respond to a prompting statement (i.e., "COVID-19 has changed our experience and reliance on technologies to keep social") and question (i.e., "Find and capture examples of technologies you use to socialize around you"), with additional prompting statements for the images taken (i.e., "You might use a device to play games or talk with others...", or "Perhaps you make use of assistive equipment to access the community..."). Meanwhile, a social network can best be understood as a network of individuals (such as friends, acquaintances, and co-workers) connected in relationships. Participants were prompted with cue card questions (i.e., What do you do with others? Try to capture hobbies, groups or communities that you engage with) that focused on both common interests (i.e., Maybe you have a common interest with others, a hobby or sport, that you do with others?) and online connectivity prompts (i.e., Do you have a digital, online place you talk or meet with others, a regular Zoom call?).
Alongside these, the topic of social practices centered on how everyday actions are typically and habitually performed and are meaningful parts of everyday life. This saw typical photovoice questions focus on representation (i.e., How do you represent yourself to others? Find and capture examples of your social identity, what makes it up, or what you like others to see in you) and sources of support. The final topic of wellbeing not only focused on happiness and life satisfaction (i.e., What might make you happy or proud?) but also on mood change across days (Figure 2). These cue cards were printed double-sided for participants to review the prompts and capture their photographic and written responses, forming a collection of eight activities.
Diaries studies form a frequent component and common item in a probe kit, often as a blank book to be filled with observations or a templated format to guide input (Wherton et al.,; Thoring et al.,). Here, the diary provides a template for recording day-to-to events, relevant imagery, and reflections on daily interactions: with technology, social activities, and wellbeing-related events. Intended to capture actions, events, and reflections over a 7-day week, the diary formed around a "Daily Schedule" template, with simple instructions to follow, allowing participants to record what they wanted (Figure 3). As a way of capturing specific events or determining routine tasks, the diary provides information that might otherwise be absent or forgotten in an interview setting. The additional "Today's Interactions" elements provided a separate section for reflections and review on the day, breaking away from the chronological schedule element to focus on discreet technological, social, and wellbeing experiences.
After completing the cultural probe, participants were invited to complete a semi-structured, post-survey interview. As an opportunity to provide feedback on the cultural probe experience and further explore the study's themes, these interviews varied from 30 min to 1.5 h in length. An interview guide was provided before participants to prepare participants and structure the interviews. It focused first on general and component-specific feedback, then discussed how they understood and perceived social technology, networks, practices, and their wellbeing (Table 1). Alongside addressing these topics, participants were also asked to clarify any images, wording or response they wished to have removed from the data set. These discussions were all conducted via the Zoom video conferencing platform, except one via a phone call, and were recorded and transcribed for use in the later analysis.
Approval for the study was obtained through our institution's human research ethics board, which established that participants' data would be personal and re-identifiable (coded) in nature, before we collected consent from all participants. The study was conducted from August to October 2021, with potential participants required to review the consent information and associated materials before engaging with the study. Once permissions and postage were organized, a parcel containing the study materials was mailed to them. In line with sanitation requirements due to the COVID-19 pandemic, mailed components were handled safely, with all elements sealed or cleaned thoroughly before provision. Participants were given 10 days to complete the kit. Seven days after the kit arrived, participants were sent a reminder to complete the tasks and an invitation to participate in an optional semi-structured interview. Of the seven provided with the mail-out kit, all kits were completed and returned within 2 weeks, and all respondents participated in an exit interview. During the exit interview, participants were invited to review their submitted materials and determine if they wanted anything removed from the data set (i.e., the faces of grandchildren or family members, etc.). This also saw participants provide permission for imagery, written responses, and interview transcripts to be used for publication and dissemination purposes.
In conducting this study, we acknowledge there are limitations and drawbacks to this work. Foremost, we note the small number of participants and single recruitment source:U3A Network Victoria:suggesting that this research might provide a rich and engaging dataset but that the results should not be considered definitive and are reflective of a small sample. Like other cultural probe studies, we also note that these studies often see limited interaction between researchers and participants, which reduces the support and engagement respondents may desire, as an issue only worsened by the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic and health-related lockdowns (Wherton et al.,; Celikoglu et al.,). This saw participants being limited to being able to seek technical support or, in the interviews, to express themselves via phone call, email, or videoconference, which did reduce the potential for capturing non-verbal communication and other benefits from face-to-face interactions.
After the probes were returned and post-study interviews conducted, the resulting written, photographic, and audio datasets were transcribed into a format beneficial for use with the qualitative data analysis computer software NVIVO. From the 35 individual probe tasks, we reviewed 76 images, 93 captions, 49 diary entries, and 322 min of interview transcription. To effectively analyse these materials, we employed Braun and Clarke's reflexive approach to thematic analysis, which we found offered a level of theoretically flexible as well as the critical reflection necessary to interrogate the characteristics of resolution in imagery of aging. Used widely across the social, behavioral, and applied sciences, this format of thematic analysis has been effective in responding to (a) people's experiences, views or perceptions; (b) understandings or representations; (c) factors or social processes that engage with phenomena; (d) rules or norms that deal with human behavior or practices, as well as this behavior or practices themselves; and (e) the construction of meaning (Braun and Clarke,). Further, as we seek to engage with methods that support a disciplined practice of critically interrogating what we do:the how and why:the reflexivity central to this approach engages with the role and actions of the designer, valuing their subjectiveness, situatedness, and awareness, questioning them and their work.
Following Braun and Clarke's six phases of thematic analysis, the photovoice, social diary, and semi-structured interview datasets were reviewed individually and then coded by the author to develop themes that spoke to the topics of the study. Encompassing the stages of thematic analysis refined by Braun and Clarke, the author undertook a process of (1) dataset familiarization through a combination of transcription and digitizing of the response, (2) data coding on the NVIVO software then took place; (3) where initial themes were generated and sorted into the overarching topics; (4) these themes were developed and reviewed; (5) which led to further theme refining, defining, and naming; and (6) resulted in the write up of this analysis in a narrated form. Specific to this study, we took a deductive orientation to code the data and sorting themes, with the first exercise in coding for social technology, networks, practices, and wellbeing (Section Social interactivity in later life). This was supplemented by a second exercise sorting themes around the conceptual idea we sought to understand through the dataset:image resolution (Section Perspectives on producing imagery of aging). Pseudonyms have been used for participants, with identifying features such as faces, names, etc., obscured.
In analyzing older adults' responses across the topics of social technology, networks, practices, and wellbeing, we documented both technology-dependent and more general forms of interaction, suggesting that social interactivity captures concerns for interpersonal human interaction that we found. While technologies may form a key (and growing) role in social interaction, respondents were more likely to describe its utility or friction in relation to other aspects of their everyday. This point, and other insights, were determined as the author systematically coded an initial fifteen to twenty codes for each topic (n = 67), which was reviewed and sorted into thirteen initial sub-themes, developed and refined into three overarching themes. These resulting themes are explained below through a short descriptor supported by responding photography and illustrative quotes.
As foremost a comment on how an individual's social network and personal identity can change over time, the theme of adapting to the shifting, and in many ways reducing, groups an older adult has around them resonated strongly with respondents. As Joan framed it, as a senior, "your social networks do change because people retire and ... quite a lot of people are moving into lifestyle communities or retirement villages". Other respondents also captured this perspective in their own lives, as Mary discussed how an annual camping trip with friends needed to be adapted to a holiday house as the group's interests and accessibility needs changed, with the group itself having dwindled as many passed away. Meanwhile, as a retiree, Claire had tried to join groups with other retirees in their 70s and 80s, which she found "a bit challenging because that's not very stimulating. For me, it's not just trying to find that set of people in my own age group".