. The Daily Grind · Design Research · UX Research · 2025

Surfacing embodied memory
through play · The Daily Grind

A board-game probe kit that used play, randomness, and defamiliarisation to surface the tacit, bodily knowledge of professional baristas, the kind of expertise that lives in hands and muscle memory, not words.

ForUniversity of Technology Sydney
RoleDesign Researcher
DeliverableThe Daily Grind · Research Paper
ToolsIllustrator · Physical making
MethodsProbe study · Cultural probes
Year2025
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What if a board game could reveal
what years of practice makes invisible?

3
card decks
48 prompts
2
weeks in
the field
5
senses
as data
0
screens
required
01 · Context

Positioning the barista as participant, not subject

To investigate embodied remembering in barista work, I designed a Snakes-and-Ladders–inspired board game probe kit that transformed everyday coffee-making routines into a playful, reflective, and defamiliarising research activity.

Rather than treating the barista as a subject, the game positioned him as an active participant, prompting sensory awareness, reflection, and metacognition through structured randomness.

“The fastest I’ve ever made coffee was when ______.”

· Senses Check card prompt
The probe
A Snakes-and-Ladders board game where every square is a prompt. Colour-coded cards sent a barista into his shifts with physical challenges, sensory reflections, and defamiliarisation tasks, generating rich qualitative data embedded in two weeks of real work.
02 · Board game design

Three decks, three modes of inquiry

A linear board path represented a full barista shift, from opening tasks to closing routines. Colour-coded spaces each corresponded to a specific deck, with dice and a game marker randomising the order of experiences. Five sensory tokens (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell) paired with the green deck. Hover the cards to interact.

Orange · Side Quests
Physical challenges
Disruptions mimicking real-world interruptions (switching hands, altering timing), designed to make the automatic conscious.
Pink · Senses Check
Mad-Lib sensory prompts
Fill-in prompts asking the participant to describe sensory cues in their own words, translating bodily knowledge into language.
Green · Senses on Strike
Defamiliarisation tasks
Imagining the temporary loss of a sense, e.g., frothing milk without hearing, paired with one of five sensory tokens.

Pull an espresso without timing it. Was your body able to judge?

answer goes here

My hands know tamp pressure is right when ______.

answer goes here

Which backup cue would you use for latte art without sight?

answer goes here
The board
Full board art · OI THE BOARD · opening through closing with colour-coded spaces and Snakes-and-Ladders-style moves
The guide
Probe guide · instructions and structure for running the kit in context
03 · Role of the probe

More than data collection

The kit acted simultaneously as a reflective tool, a defamiliarisation device, and a metacognitive trigger, surfacing insights the participant had never verbalised despite 20+ years of experience.

Role 01
Reflective tool
Prompted the barista to articulate tacit knowledge he normally “just does”, making the invisible visible through structured prompting.
Role 02
Defamiliarisation device
Forced him to imagine tasks without key senses, e.g., frothing milk without hearing, breaking routine to expose the sensory architecture beneath it.
Role 03
Lens on embodied expertise
Revealed how sensory cues, routines, and working memory operate in real craft practice, including cross-sensory judgements like pairing sound and resistance for tamping.
Role 04
Metacognitive trigger
Surfaced spatial memory insights, including clumsiness when tools were rearranged, and evidence of sensory interdependence the participant had never previously considered.
04 · Data generated

Rich qualitative output

Two weeks of embedded probe use produced a dense body of qualitative data, written on the cards themselves, in the participant’s own words, during and after real shifts.

Output 01
Sensory descriptions
How hearing “guides the milk’s texture.” How resistance in the portafilter signals grind quality. Specific, embodied language that standard interviews rarely produce.
Output 02
Routine breakdowns
Identifying which steps were fully automatic and which were fragile, revealing the internal structure of expertise that 20+ years of practice had made invisible.
Output 03
Challenge reflections
Time pressure, customer surveillance, environmental changes. The participant articulated exactly what degrades his sensory access when conditions shift.
Output 04
Sensory interdependence
Evidence of cross-sensory judgement, sound and resistance for tamping, sight and weight for extraction. No sense operates alone in skilled barista work.
Finding patterns · quotes, sub-themes, and clusters across the four synthesis themes
05 · Reflection

Play as a research method

The game format did something traditional probes rarely achieve: it lowered the stakes of participation. Baristas engaged with it as a game first, a research tool second. That ordering mattered.

The defamiliarisation tasks were the most generative. Asking someone to imagine losing a sense, or to complete a task wrong, forced them into metacognition, exactly the territory that embodied memory usually hides from.

“Playful probes can surface embodied knowledge, not just document behaviour.”

· Project conclusion
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