Probing Yarns about Ageing and Making

Abstract

Making often involves creating, repurposing, handiwork and shared knowledge. Making is beneficial to its participants, with craft groups for older adults becoming more popular. In order to engage with older makers and explore their approach to ageing through their making, we created yarn probes: a method of enquiry to gain rich insight into a person's lived experience by building on their passions, creativity, the reflective and tactile nature of crafting, and storytelling. The yarn probes method involves eliciting stories and insights from participants as they craft artifacts in yarn and reflect on their making practices. We reflect on the use of yarn probes with three participants from two making communities, over a period of 2 months. Yarn probes led to a nuanced understanding of the experience of ageing through making, the ways in which it supports health (meditative, healing, remaining active), participation (altruism, teaching, social interaction, learning) and security (family, sharing, home). We discuss three considerations that make yarn probes effective in generating design insight: the meaning that materials and artifacts hold, opportunities for active engagement and reflection through the making of an artifact, and dialogue between makers and HCI researchers.