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.