fredag 30 oktober 2015

Compiled comments

Theme 1


I enjoyed the discussion we had about cloning, the siamese twins might have been stretching it but it was interesting to say the least. Unfortunately I didn't dare talking TOO much that day with my voice being in shambles.
I think a lot of us agree that especially Kant was hard to grasp when first reading it, but that it slowly sank in over the week after the lecture and seminar.
Like most of the other persons who commented already I opened my eyes when I saw the passage about our prior experiences being an obstacle while trying to be objective.
I think you are on to something here, considering how a lot of research want to find legitimacy in referencing previous studies that are already accepted, and because of that cement a view of the world we already have. I'm not sure that I 100% agree that age is the deciding factor here but rather "experience", in the sense that you get comfortable in doing your work the same way you always did rather than being a rebel who question everything. Now don't get me wrong, the older researcher most likely have more experience, but I don't think age is the primary factor.
Either way, a really interesting thought that made me think even more about the question of objectivity.
Hi there, I agree with so much in your post regarding how the learning curve looked during the first theme. There is however something I believe you have mixed up (or maybe I'm the one who is confused).


The analytic judgement is the one where the predicate is present in the subjects concept. To use your example "All bachelors are single".
A synthetic judgement however is the one you might have to investigate empiricaly, e.g. "All bachelors are unhappy". We knew from earlier that all bacherlors are single, but can we be sure that all of them are unhappy about this?
At least that is what I understood from the lecture, and a peak at wikipedia seems to support my belief. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic%E2%80%93synthetic_distinction
Anyway, a good post overall, and like the others I love the puppy.
Hi I might have missunderstood your reflection post, but I'm not sure I totally agree with everything you wrote about analytic and synthetic judgements. From my understanding it is like this:
What defines analytic judgements is that the predicate of the judgement is part of the subjects concept. E.g. "All bachelors are unmaried".
A synthetic judgement could be "All bachelors are unhappy", the previous example was analytic because unmarried is part of the definition of a bachelor, but unhappy is not, hence why it's synthetic. In this case we can not know if the judgement is true a priori either.
The interesting part is when we come to synthetic a priori knowledge, according to Kant (as I understand it), your example of "2+2 = 4" is synthetic, because the predicate "equals 4" is not part of the subjects "2" and "2"s concept. We still know that the quation is true, and as far as I know this is an example of synthetic a priori knowledge.
As far as I understand it, “objects conforming to our cognition” can be explained by the school book version of Kant saying "we can't know anything about the world itself, all we can know is how we perceive it through our faculties of knowledge". That is we humans can never observe the world as it is from god's point of view, Because of that we have to accept the fact that we will always look at the world through "colored glasses" where our opinions are are tainted by our past experiences and values.
Reading Kant really was as close to a punch in the face I have gotten while reading, but I find myself understand more even as I'm commenting. A shame that you can't make a post-post reflection.

I would have loved to be part of the infinity discussion, seems like it was really interesting.

Theme 2


I totally agree with you regarding the dangers of mass and social media. I think we all have a couple of friends who constantly like or share things on facebook without looking at the content critically. I personally daily see post originating from the left and right wings of the political spectrum in my feed. I decided to not block them because it is kind of amusing to do something as simple as a an image search on the pictures used in articles to see how people mislead eachother.

The blind leads the blind…

Nice reflection, I especially like the part about sub- and superstructure while linking it to movies. Something that got me thinking however was your example of aura in cars. I totally agree that the first car, or let's say a custom painted/modified sports car have an aura because of it uniqueness. Can a mass produced car however even have aura? You say it has less, but hasn't the aura withered completely when it's just one of many?

Other than this, a really nice reflection!

I agree with you that Benjamin see the withering of the aura as something positive because it makes it available to the mass. Like the teacher said during our seminar, Benjamin see this as something empowering for the working class where they are no longer left our of art that previously was often only available to the social elite. I also see this as one part of the connection to Benjamin's view on why art has revolutionary potential.

Like the previous poster I also like your conclusion about nominalism stating that it lacks vision. If we are only to observe the world with a perception that is largely colored by an already cemented world view, I believe we are bound to stand still in it. I think we need the abstract concepts, groupings etc. to make new theories, I personally saw this in the papers I read for the themes after this where new theories were defined with the help of these groups to find connections, it's limitations and scope.

Overall good examples for all points you are making and it seems like you understood this theme well after the week. Do you still find something unclear after the seminar or did you get all your questions answered? Either way a good summary.

Theme 3

What I liked the most in your reflection is that you brought up weak theory, something I didn't do myself. While the example of ice cream and sharks might be easy to understand, I personaly think the distinction gets harder when not looking at obvious examples. Would any theory that doesn't try to predict its own failures be considered weak? I'm not sure myself but it's an interesting topic to think about imo.
Anyway, great that you feel that you know the difference between hypothesis and theory, since it's indeed a word that is used quite different in every day life.
A good summary of what was discussed during the theme and I really enjoy your scientific cycle! I actually drew something similar in a less detailed form during the small group discussions in my seminar.
I'm not sure I fully agree with you on applied research however. While those types of studies does rely mainly on old theory and want to find a solution for a real world problem, the results can still have knowledge contribution to theory in my opinion.
I agree with you about the question regarding theory and truth being very interesting. I would say that a good theory would be the best explanation of a phenomenon available with the knowledge we have that is widely accepted. It is however not nessecarily the truth. Anyway I enjoyed reading your reflection, the only thing I missed was the difference between theory and hypothesis.

Hi!
Some of the differences between Gregor and Sutton/Staw might be explained by them being in different fields of study and having different views on theory. What I think they mean however with just quoting old theory is that you have to perform your own logical reasoning with the help of old knowledge and data before you have achieved knowledge contribution. At least that's my take on it.

Overall a nice reflection and glimpse into what you learned last week.

I think it's great that you brought up the point about theory being linked to the current paradigm, which is important to keep in mind.
Like the majority of people I talked to agree with, the difference between theory and hypothesis is ignored in everyday life. If i recall correctly it was actually Leif Dahlberg slapped that truth to us in our first semester when I began my studies at KTH. Not sure if that class was still mandatoy when you guys started however. Either way, it has stuck with me since.

I get the feeling you understand the topic well after the lecture and seminar.

Theme 4

http://reb2572.blogspot.se/2015/10/post-theme-4.html?showComment=1444661875641#c1048481461354002745
I agree with pretty much everything you are saying in this reflection, even though I would like to rephrase your statement about quantitative methods being unable to explain complex questions.

It can defenitely be hard, but I think it's more about defining and redefining your research question(s) to understand what you want to achieve (yea I know it's cheating to write comments after the Haibo Li lecture), and make sure your hypotheses are well stated.

I would argue you could find really unexpected connections that would be really hard to see with qualitative methods, as long as you designed your tests properly, like you also mention.

On the other hand, even though I just spent my whole arguing the possibility, it might not always be the easiest way to use qualitative methods.

It is good to see that you learned much from this weeks theme, and it's even better that you give an explanation for all your points instead of just listing them.

Good job covering the theme, and it was refreshing reading a different experience than most others during this week.

I totally agree with you about the point of learning more about qualitative methods than quantitative during the theme. Qualitative methods themselves are not really hard to understand even though the math behind it might be. But then again we didn't really mention that at all except for a few quick mentions.

It's by looking at the situations where quantitative methods were less suited that I learned more about the qualitative.

A really well written reflection and an important lesson to learn that the way you ask the questions will affect the outcome. I think it's a trap that is very easy to fall into, being too eager to look at the results that you forget to look at if what you are asking are really giving the subjects to have a different opinion than what you are looking for.

I would dare say if the point mentioned above would be the only thing you take with you from this course, it would still have been worth taking it.

Theme 5

While I agree with Marcus that the clip from Johnny English was a bit too long (could have skipped the first minutes), I think it's a very good example of why finding an alternative solution might be preferable.

You might be able to solve it like the thief did, or in the example of head tracking by having the camera at the monitor. This is however much harder and requires much more effort due to technical limitations of the camera, or requires acrobatics and energy in the case of the thief.

By redefining your idea of a solution, you might end up getting the same result like getting past a hurdle with less problems. This is why Haibo said you should spend 90% of the time refining your idea, then just 10% of the time solving it.

Haibo and Anders talked about prototypes from different perspectives, which I think caused some confusion after the lectures. Haibo talked from a commercial point of view where prototypes indeed often work as proof of concept to aquire funding.

Anders however talked from a pure theoretical research point of view, and he himself said something along the lines of "I don't have to care at all about if what I find can generate any money" (I can't remember the exact quote). His interest is all about gaining new knowledge, which is the reason to why he look at prototypes differently. To him it's about provoking a discussion to help him gain said knowledge, and he did this by knowingly leaving out functionality that might be vital to a commercial product.
Others have already given you some points from the second lecture that you missed, but I will add something I felt was important as well. When conducting design research your empirical data will be different from that in a study using quantitative/qualitative methods. Here the data and knowledge contribution can be seen as the lessons learned during the study.

The way I understood Haibo when he talked about math, is that understanding how things are connected, they could understand before testing multiple solutions that mounting a camera on a subjects head would give the highest precision for tracking the motion of the head. If I remember correctly this method would result in 10 times higher resolution.

While engineers might not always need to sit with a calculator all days, understanding the underlaying math will help you solve a lot of problems because you see the logic in it.

It seems like you covered pretty much everything being discussed during the lectures, while it's just a small detail the only thing I missed was a more clear mention of Haibo and Anders using prototypes for different reasons. You cover both points of view, as did Anders quickly in his lecture. Still a good reflection!

Theme 6


I totally agree with you about the fact that it was kind of hard to find papers using qualitative methods, and even more so a case study where you really got to look at the process. I guess that is the drawback of the limited space you are given when submitting a paper to a journal.

I also found the "anything goes" quote interesting, mainly because it went against all the norm of strict rules on e.g. conduct a quantitative study to get proper results.

I enjoyed reading your reflections and just wanted to put in a word about qualitative methods for media technology. I would say that using contextual interviews or "thinking aloud" are very useful methods while testing e.g. a GUI or similar making it highly relevant for us to learn.

I would also have liked to see a lecture on the subject but good to see that you feel like you understand case studies after the seminar anyway.

I'm happy my experience with the longitudinal studies felt at least a little interesting! To be honest I had completely forgot about that research method, given it was 10 years I was part of that study. It is however a very interesting one that could give you great results if you manage to find a good balance of time used to perform it.

I felt like we had a good discussion going and you have covered all the important points covered.
Something I would like to clarify is the question about hypotheses. It is true that you do not have any while starting a case study, gather the data and analyze it. However after that is done, you do formulate hypotheses in an effort to explain what you have concluded already. After that you reiterate to test said knowledge and maybe find out something new. I believe it's step 6 in Eisenhardt's list.

A very interesting example of quantitative methods being used on a single person that I would have enjoyed listening to myself. However like the person above me noted, it will be hard getting a high statistical significance on only 1 subject, but what are you supposed to do when no others are available?

It's a shame no lecture was given, would have been nice to get an indepth example of a well performed case study with examples of all the steps being used.
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Final Posting

A lot has been done during the course, papers read, texts written and many hours of reflections were spent at home, lectures and at seminars. While it was sometimes confusing, the journey was sill interesting. But what do will I take away from it all, what can I say about all these research methods we have confronted and how would I say that they can be combined?

I would like to reference my previous reflections on quantitative and qualitative studies where the latter basically challenged the methodology used in the first while studying the topic of how, when and why someone identify oneself as a gamer. I can see why using quantitative methods is attractive in this case since you can calculate and test connections with numbers. However something that in my opinion was lost in the quantitative study was a bigger emphasis on the context. While the paper itself was fine with accepting the subjects replies due to the fact that they were only interested in knowing who would willingly and openly identify as a gamer, actually understand WHY this happen would be much more interesting. To do this properly you would need to go deeper and include qualitative methods like contextual interviews or some kind of journal that is being kept by the subjects to be able to identify more specifically what could trigger the change.

While looking for examples of studies combining different research methods I ran across something called triangulation that really caught my interest. At its core it means finding the way by looking at something from two (or more) points of view. This can be done by gathering two separate sets of empirical data which might give your research a higher degree of validity by lowering the risk of having inconsistencies. The same can be said about applying it to your methodology. Using different methods to look at the same problem is what I have argued for at seminars to get a deeper understanding about the phenomenon you are studying and now I have a word to attach to it.

One of the reasons to why I feel so strongly about triangulation and always taking context into account is something I remember from reading organisational theory, namely the Hawthorne effect. The researchers went out to perform a research study on industrial workers to see how changes in work environment like illumination, length and timing of breaks etc affected productivity. What was discovered was that a lot of the increase in productivity could be explained by the fact that these workers’ felt special at work for being the ones being observed and not their colleagues. Should the study have been conducted purely quantitatively without taking into contextual parameters except those being measured specifically in each experiment, nor comparing the numbers to those of the average worker not in the study the results might have been very skewed.

Aside from increasing validity, combining methods might be a necessity like when attempting innovation. I was really inspired by Anders Lundström’s lecture when he talked about research through design and the role of the prototype as a way of provoking discussions. In the beginning of a study you might have gathered data either quantitatively or qualitatively to gain some level of basic  understanding about the topic but is unable to draw any reliable conclusions. This is where the prototype comes in! The prototype might never be meant to simulate the final product but rather knowingly be designed to test something specific that your previous data could not answer. By presenting the prototype to your sample you can gain new helpful insights if you successfully emphasis the problem in your design. With the lessons learned you can gain new knowledge and proceed in your studies.

It is unfortunate papers being published in our field most often present only one type of method. While I understand that you have some kind of word limit to make the journals possible to publish I believe explaining the entire process of testing different methods, designing the final tests and failed tests would be highly valuable. I’m a believer of the quote “you learn from your misstakes” and also that this would be usable information to mention in a paper since it shows that the researchers have explored the problem from different angles which in my opinion could increase the validity of the knowledge gained but also be helpful for anyone who would want to delve deeper into the subject in the future.  I was thinking about this when Ilias mentioned the paper he was one of the authors of, which he claims was done purely quantitatively. While this is true for the experiment, wouldn’t the design of the experiment still be part of the same study, and wouldn’t that make it part qualitatively? I’m sure people would argue against me on this point but that’s the way I see it.

The last example I want to bring up is case studies. While I see them as a strategy rather than a method in itself that can utilize both qualitative and quantitative methods I just love what I see as controlled chaos in them. When “anything goes” you can combine, alter and change research methods between iterations to gain new information and understand the data you already have. There seems to be some kind of strict framework in place for how research should be performed to help filter bad theory. While case studies should still make sure that the methods they use are implemented in a proper way, I feel like they give the opportunity for more thinking outside the box when you are allowed to go back and try again with some other method to improve your knowledge. This is specifically helpful in cases where not much is known. One specific paper I read during this course the researchers triumphantly claim they managed to see a connection in a field that still need more exploring. To be perfectly honest I was really dissapointed by the fact that they never tried to delve deeper, since to me the results felt like educated guesses based on knowledge from similar fields without ever trying to explain anything. Had a case strudy been done they might have learned something really interesting.


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måndag 26 oktober 2015

Comments theme 6

1. http://capitalmyboy.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-6-post-theme-post.html?showComment=1445810346359#c3635647648368569748

2. http://dm2572rberggre.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-6-after.html?showComment=1445811578921

3. http://dm2572byen.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-6-qualitative-and-case-study_16.html?showComment=1445812496619

4. http://oscarlimback.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-6-qualitative-and-case-study_19.html?showComment=1445813160178

5. http://jonathansbs.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-6-post.html?showComment=1445815085913#c4428112503000597774
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måndag 19 oktober 2015

Comments theme 5

1. http://mediafluttery.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-5-reflection.html?showComment=1445262022436#c381503524959532118

2. http://mediatechnologyatkth.blogspot.se/2015/10/reflection-what-i-learnt-during-week-41.html?showComment=1445262505010#c6654119902700378123

3. http://fromplatotocasestudies.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-5-reflections.html?showComment=1445263430521#c5047338946148190903

4. http://stinazwahlen.blogspot.se/2015/10/post-theme-5-quantitative-research.html?showComment=1445264758156#c5761253413603490070

5. http://securepathofscience.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-5-design-research-reflection.html?showComment=1445266502855#c6916421989261915570
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söndag 18 oktober 2015

Post theme 6

I selected my paper for the qualitative method part of theme 6 based on the fact that it covered a similar topic as the one I used for quantitative methods. To me it was interesting because the point of the whole paper was to challenge the current state of research into the subject that is mainly done quantitively, and I share the researchers point of view myself.

During the seminar we didn't really delve that much deeper into qualitative methods since we have been discussing it during multiple seminars already, but rather just talking about the papers we all selected.

We did however put some more time into talking about case studies, and I have to say that I'm really happy with the explanation I gave in my pre-reflection. The only thing I would like to add is a small addition to better explain theoretical saturation. In the beginning of a study it's relatively easy to find connection and information unknown to you, but while you keep iterating the cost of gaining new information keeps getting higher in what I believe to be an exponential rate. Sooner or later you will reach a point where the cost of learning something new is not worth the investment in time or money. I would also like to clarify that a case study is not a method itself but rather a strategy which I was a bit unclear about in my pre-reflection.

This is not to say that everything interesting is known about the case, but it is probably better to cover it in a future specialized study instead. Unfortunately we didn't have any lecture on this theme and I honestly didn't get any big eye openers between making my pre-reflection and now. Ilias even told me “I have nothing more to add” after sharing my view on what a case study is, which of course felt good, but I would have loved to have more things to discuss during the seminar from listening to more examples given during a lecture like the other weeks.


Overall I think case studies are interesting with it's cyclic nature of iterations rather than just having one predefined research question, even if those could be altered a bit as well.
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måndag 12 oktober 2015

Comments theme 4

1. http://reb2572.blogspot.se/2015/10/post-theme-4.html?showComment=1444661875641#c1048481461354002745

2. http://mediafluttery.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-4-reflection.html?showComment=1444662871354#c6327037596416644812

3. http://mashasthoughts123.blogspot.se/2015/10/seminar-4-refection.html?showComment=1444663337892#c272769935324487996

4. http://u1vfukfo.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-4-post-posting-quantitative.html?showComment=1444664105128#c6642115301102584770
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söndag 11 oktober 2015

Post Theme 5

Post Haibo Li
For me Haibo's lecture was kind of refreshing. While he didn't really talk much about design research itself, I was very interested in his point of view about research from an industrial rather than purely theoretical perspective.

What I believe to be his most important point was what I call “the 90/10 principle” (can't remember what he actually called it), which means that you should spend 90% of the time finding and defining the actual problem you want to solve and just 10% of the time actually solving it. The old joke with a new spin, while cheesy explained it rather well. A teacher tries to figure out if it's possible to outrun a bear and decide it's not possible. His student on the other hand puts on his running shoes and say “I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you”. The student clearly spent more time thinking about the problem itself rather than trying to find a solution to a bad question.

He also talked about something I mentioned in my pre-theme post, namely the importance of securing funding for your project and how prototypes can help you do this with a proof of concept. He did however expand on it even more while talking about the importance of knowing both the technical and market aspects when pitching the idea, or pitching it as an entrepeneur. You have to question if your project actually adress a real problem, if there is a market, account for timing and if you are actually qualified to do it.

Lastly he talked about the importance of not always trusting yourself. When you are working with a project you always run the risk of seeing what you want you want to see, also known as tunnel vision. I agree that this is very important to keep in mind, and isn't this one of the reasons to why the HCI-field and its focus on usability is so important in the first place?

Maybe I liked this lecture a lot because I myself believe in the importance of having a business mind as an engineer and see what I want to see in a lecture that agrees with it. Never the less. It gave me some more food for thought.

Post Anders Lundström
While Haibo was very business oriented, Anders took us back to the theoretical aspects of research. He argued that a prototype in research doesn't necessarily have to try and solve a problem at all. The aim of a prototype in design research should be to provoke discussions about a specific topic with the intention to gain some kind of new knowledge. While he agree with Haibo when it comes to prototypes in a business setting, I took it as his view being vastly different when it comes to research where he doesn't have to take money into account. I think both views are very valid depending on your personal goals with your work. I think that I have already stated where I stand enough however...

Anders did delve deeper into design research as a concept, explaining that the actual process can be seen as the empirical data of the study, which differs from quantitative and qualitative studies we covered earlier. The knowledge contribution could be seen as the lessons learned and the problems identified while doing it rather than the result or solution.


Something I never did before this lecture was actually trying to explain the word design, which is kind of weird knowing how much I use the word in every day life. It's not like I don't “understand” the word but I liked the definition he gave: “Design is an intention to change reality into something more preferable”. It might just be an anecdote but I'm surely going to start using it myself.
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fredag 9 oktober 2015

Pre Theme 6

Public Displays of Play: Studying Online Games in Physical Settings
Nicholas Taylor, Jennifer Jenson, Suzanne de Castell, Barry Dilouya
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12054

This paper studies gamers in a physical setting rather than online surveys that can be seen as the norm. The authors themselve state that they want to challenge these quantitative methods that are normally used because context play a big role in how gamers will identify with the identity as a gamer and games,

1) Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

The participants in the study were interviewed at locations associated with gaming in a social setting like LAN-parties, internet cafes and events. What was discovered was that many of the participants that answered that they don't take part in a virtual world was in fact MMOG players that might just be on a hiatus from or in between games, but still had a strong connection to virtual world avatars. This is something that wouldn't be seen if the study was conducted purely quantitatively.

The downside of this method can be seen when the researchers tried to recruit participants at internet cafes, where the setting was uninviting for intrusion, and on top of this I imagine it being harder for a participant to express him or herself as freely as one can in an anonimous online survey.

Some participants also agreed to make a travelogue where they answered questions regarding online/offline activities to see if their adventures in MMOGs affect their behavior in real life.

2) What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?

What I take away from this paper is not knowledge about a qualitative method I didn't know existed before, but rather once again emphasize the importance of using qualitative methods to understand your sample, especially if you want to conduct data gathering through quantitative means. Other papers I have read on the subject ignores this, and one could question the validity of those results and conclusions when considering how the research was performed. Conclusions can surely be drawn from the data, but do we truly understand why?


Building Theories from Case Study Research
Eisenhardt, K. M.

Methods for Game User Research: Studying Player Behavior to Enhance Game Design
Desurvire, H., El-Nasr, M.S.

1) Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.
A case study is research performed on a person, organisation, service etc. and its context. The methods used could be of both quantitative and qualitative nature, and using knowledge gained during the research to improve methods or research questions is encouraged, in fact you are not supposed to formulate your hypotheses until after you have some form of data to analyze. This will go on in an iterative process until a theoretical saturation is met or you run out of resources in the form of time or funds. The goal is to answer the research question and make some sort of framework answer that could be generalized to similar problems.

2) Use the "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" (Eisenhardt, summarized in Table 1) to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your selected paper.
The main problem I had with my paper was the fact that a lot of details about the process was left out, presumably due to an NDA enforced by the game developing company the study was performed on. They do however set out with a goal in mind to look at the game design process and apply different usability testing methods to improve user experience.

With the help of qualitative methods like think-aloud and quantitative data from questionnaires surveying user satisfaction the game designers were able to solve many of their problems by developing a tutorial in a way that learned the user how to play the game properly without making them lose interest in the game before it started for real. Unfortunately the specifics were not mentioned but it seems like it was successful and the paper seems to focus on giving other developers a framework on how to perform user testing themselves.

What I felt was lacking was the exploration or at least description of potential problems that could occur when following the recipe suggested in the paper. Surely there are advantages and disadvantages with all methods and not giving these enough consideration at least in writing is a minus in my opinion.



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måndag 5 oktober 2015

Comments theme 3

1. http://butlikewhyisit.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-reflection.html?showComment=1443996571210#c2197836872768580133

2. http://securepathofscience.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-research-and-theory-reflection.html?showComment=1443997564191#c8653941997687557210

3. http://dm2572byen.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-research-and-theory_27.html?showComment=1443998746345

4. http://bjornsblogggg.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-post-reflection.html?showComment=1443999285365#c404097275335936178

5. http://rickardsdm2572.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-post-seminar-reflections.html?showComment=1443999979540
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söndag 4 oktober 2015

Post theme 4

Quantitative methods as a concept should be easier to understand than any of the other themes so far. Who haven't done some kind of data collection through questionnaires and similar some time in school. While the concept itself wasn't anything new, I still found it interesting to see how it is applied in research studies. I will not pretend that I understand all the math used while calculating the connections nor have I looked at it closer, but it made me think about the importance of identifying as many parameters as possible before you perform your test that can affect the result both directly and indirectly.

Something I found interesting however during the lecture was how much work is put into refining the questions through qualitative methods to look for any weaknesses in your test. All the iterations of pilot tests where you try to avoid bias, confusion etc. with evaluations before you believe you have a good test that hopefully will give you usable data.

With this in mind, I don't think any study related to human behavior can be done effectively with quantitative methods alone, even though the data gathering is. I got some flashbacks to Kant and his quote “perception without conception is blind” thinking you can't draw any conclusions and understand your data unless you know what you want to achieve and that your test actually answer that question in a good way.

In the seminar we talked about some strengths of quantitative methods, and what came up is the fact that you can reach a high statistical significance without having to spend as much time and resources compared to if the data collection was qualitative, much like I discussed in my pre theme post. The most interesting thing, that I didn't think about before the seminar that seems obvious after hearing it is the fact that you might not be able to get any interesting information from a quantitative study. Ilias used the example of a study on homeless people where doing a qualitative study where the researcher lived with them for a time was way better to understand the environment they live in and take part of all what I like to call silent knowledge.


I also see a weakness in only using quantitative methods when attempting innovation in e.g. design work. I can't see any way you could use quantitative methods to make e.g. the study on tangible user interface in connection to learning children programming like in the paper for theme 5. Observation of the behaviour of the subjects in the study gave more information than any questionnaire could, and similarly any attempt to measure input data would miss all the important contextual information that might be of even more importance.
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fredag 2 oktober 2015

Pre Theme 5

Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration
Réhman, S., Sun, J., Liu, L., & Li, H. (2008)

1) How can media technologies be evaluated?
First and foremost technology you develop should be evaluated based on it's usability. Like the authors mention in the paper they use the ISO recommendations regarding effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. It's important that your service or product is intuitive or easy to learn or the user will lose interest. In the paper this is evaluated by looking at empirical data from tests e.g. error rates before and after training but also through a questionnaire.

When looking at evaluation of media technologies in general however, I believe it's important to look at economical factors as well. Instead of just asking “can we do it?”, you have to include “should we do it?”. This might not be the the most important aspect during research like in this paper since they are investigating if the concept works at all. However the authors still include that aspect somewhat when asking if the test subjects would be willing to pay for the service. Money is almost always of importance (even though there are examples like e.g. the development of Linux) and I would dare say it's an aspect you can't ignore. Will the taste justify the price? Did we develop with the user that is willing to pay in mind, or a user that will not?

2) Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?
One explanation could be linked to what I previously mentioned about money. Research and development requires funding and even if a proof of concept is not required by e.g. an investor, it could still help in lowering the perceived risk in granting the funding.

It is also a way to test theory when putting it into practice. Does it translate well into an actual product or service or are there new parameters we have to keep in mind and account for to reach a satisfying result? Prototypes serve this purpose well since you in an early stage can test specific functionalities and reiterate design choices. Worst case scenario might be that you choose to scrap a project, but better do it in an early stage than turning it into a big sunk cost fallacy.

Finding Design Qualities in a Tangible Programming Space
Ylva Fernaeus & Jakob Tholander

Differentiated Driving Range: Exploring a Solution to the Problems with the “Guess-O-Meter” in Electric Cars
Anders Lundström

3) Are there any important differences with design driven research compared to other research practices?
When comparing these two papers to the ones I chose myself for the previous themes, I would say the main difference is that the design driven research is attempting innovation. A simpler way to explain my point would be that it tries to explain how? rather than why?.

4) Can practical design work in itself be considered a 'knowledge contribution'?
Choices made during design work should always be motivated by other theories and/or user tests in some form. While doing this we are entering the field of “design and action theory” mentioned in the article by Gregor in theme 3. Findings during the design process and can be evalutated by others as can the method itself. I agree with this since you do not only benefit from learning from your own misstakes, but also those of others. It is of course also very benefitial to find inspiration in what have worked for others.

5) Are there any differences in design intentions within a research project, compared to design in general?
Once again I want to bring up economical aspects to back my statement. Within research the aim should be how to best achieve high usability in a theoretical sense. Design in general however still have usability as a priority, but monetary gain is likely to be a driving force compared to knowledge itself.


6) Is research in tech domains such as these ever replicable? How may we account for aspects such as time/historical setting, skills of the designers, available tools, etc?

I think it's hard to replicate the research fully since design is very context and user base specific. However this is likely not an issue since I believe the important thing to take with you from reading these kinds of research papers is inspiration for your own methods and early prototypes since design work is iterative.
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