Below is an "annotation" of machine imperfect as an interactive probe:
Opening Question
The probe starts with a deceptively simple question:
"how many times did your phone act up, annoy, or inconvenience you today?"
Specifically asking about "today," it prompts the participant to reflect on particular instances in the past few hours of their life.
Scenes for Reflection
Moving on, the probe then "walks" the participant through 6 common scenes of annoyances and inconveniences that people often experience with their smartphones at hand:
Scene #1: Missed Notifications
Scene #2: Overheating
Scene #3: Out of battery
Scene #4: Frozen screen
Scene #5: Broken links
Scene #6: Spinning wheel (of the death)
Self-Reflection
At the end, the probe would ask the participant, again, to reflect on their very own experiences with their smartphone, particularly moments that upset, annoyed, inconvenienced, or otherwise gave them the ick.
Beyond thinking about their experiences, the probe also asked the participant to hold the thoughts of "fixing" their phone in suspension. Instead, perhaps counterintuitively, it asks how one would like to move through these moments, as well as how the world could be kinder and more caring given the commonplace occurences of these moments?
Below is the cultural probe (click here if it doesn't load). While the probe is designed to be engaged with on mobile devices, you can interact with it on desktop devices as well: