This master thesis presents a study conducted at Aalborg Theater, which has experienced a continual decline in ticket sales throughout season 22/23. Factors contributing to this decline include the lingering effects of the covid-19 pandemic and subsequent societal lockdowns, the war in Ukraine and the resulting inflation, and the continuous rise in cultural offers, that together with the theater fights over the right to our limited time and attention.
The purpose of this research is to investigate the effectiveness and usage of cultural probes as a data collection method regarding respondents' experiences and relationships with Aalborg Theater as a way of gaining insights into the lived experiences of Aalborg Theater’s audience, which is also the subject of analysis and future works in this thesis. With an imminent focus on audience development, this thesis builds upon the application of cultural probes as a data collection method by testing the method within the experience industry. Drawing on existing theory regarding the use of probes for data collection and exploring the incorporation of a playful approach (Ludic design) in the design process, this thesis seeks to test the feasibility and functionality of cultural probes within a significantly shorter timeframe compared to existing projects utilizing this method as a basis for data collection. This new probe-format is in this thesis named theatre-probes.
By employing the probe method in the form of theater-probes and examining existing theories on its usage and relevance, fruitful data was obtained from the respondents visiting Aalborg Theater with the probe-kits. The data provided insights into the respondents’ lived experiences, and painted a picture of the respondents experience from start to finish. A proposal for future work within the context of Aalborg Theater is the development of an app-based probe to optimize the data collection process and reduce the material resources. Expanding the use of this method within a framework of broader cultural institutions could involve testing the method in multiple different cultural institutions to establish a basis for comparison. Exploring similarities and differences would allow for an assessment of the possibility or dismissal of a common evaluative data collection method within the scope of a broader audience development than presented in this thesis.