Final Reflection

When this course first started, I did not really know what to expect from it. My initial thoughts was that this was a fact driven, gather data and write reports kind of course, instead it appeared to start off like a philosophy course. This made it contrast extremely with all our others courses which are less humanities-based and more factual. I have learned much more in this course than I first thought I would. I have learned about how my perception differs from everyones elses and that knowledge and even things that feels like they can’t be different, like colors, are different. How everything we see and feel is interpreted by our minds, mixed with experience and changed to create different viewpoints depending on who we are. How seemingly similar things can differ so much from person to person is truly interesting.

As the course progressed I feel like it changed direction away from the more philosophical part, to a more analytical one and actually, as I first thought the course was going to be about, it took a turn for the more gather data like, practise research methods and go through theories, to later be able to make the most of our reports. I guess it did so pretty quickly, even though I feel like half the course was about philosophy.

We started to read a lot about, big spoiler, theory and different methods. I have learned what the concept of theory actually means and to reason and analyze it in a way I couldn’t before. The theme that I think gave me most was the theme “Research and Theory”. It focused mostly on what a theory are and what it’s not, which gave it a very clear picture to use for reference when continuing to delve deeper into the course. To give an example, pure data or research are not a theory though they are the building stones on which a theory can grow.

Later in the course we started to read and discuss about the different kinds of theory. Analysis, explanation, prediction, explanation and prediction, and design and action. A word ‘theory’, that earlier ment only ‘idea’ for me, now have many different underlying meanings which differs depending on the situation which they are used in and focuses on different aspects when subject changes. I found it easier to get a better grasp on ‘theory’, when these different separations arose. It’s interesting to see the development you can go through in just a brief period of time, in the beginning of the course theory doesn’t mean that much and at the end of the course you know different kinds which lets you choose the best possible action for research.

Not only can theories be categorized in the different kinds I wrote about above but theory also changes depending on the subject. Theory in natural science is not the same as theory in social sciences. Theory in the former is more about making predictions, something that is very hard in social sciences since everyone and their perception is different, instead the focus lies on explaining the occurrence of certain phenomena.

With the theory mindset now established the course progressed into the explaining and usage of different research methods, quantitative and qualitative. The former makes it easy to conduct surveys, structured interviews and observations. They are primarily based on numbers which lays the ground for easy to generalize, statistical tests. Qualitative methods on the other hand are based on focus groups, in-depth interviews and document reviews. Unlike quantitative methods this is more subjective, the condition described are from the point of view of the one experiencing it which makes it more in-depth than quantitative methods but also harder to generalize and rather focuses on a certain group.

To be able to correctly identify a problem or to answer a question you have to know what kind of research has to be done, in what ways it gives you the data necessary, how efficient the research progress will be and how reliable the result will be. The knowledge of theory and methods is what makes this possible.

Most questions can, to some extent, always be approached using either quantitative or qualitative research methods, the one that is most suited depends on the underlying main goal. To give as broad a picture as possible of the question it is very useful in most situations to combine both research methods. Which in many situations seems to solve the problems a single methodological approach unfortunately can create. The design process of the research relies heavily on the method used to conduct it and combining both methods is considerably more time consuming than just having to account for one, however the way quantitative and qualitative methods outway each other's shortcomings is often worth it if the main goal is not very well defined. It’s also important to factor in what theory you want to build when designing the research and establishing the usage of one or both of these methods.

In one of the articles I read during this course the main goal was to identify the bias of search engines, how they affect the search results, potentially hiding different sites. To test this they created a bot which collected data for several months, which they then compiled to a result. The research question here I find to be really hard to conclude without the use of quantitative methods, I can’t think of a way to perform the tests necessary using a qualitative method unless creating an AI to conduct the research.

From this I drew the conclusion that for some research only one method is possible for use but often the result could be extended using the other research method to give background, incentive or something similar to the research. Therefore I think, to best answer complex research questions you really need to know the problem. From there you can build your theory, then you can start to think about what method or methods you want to use that best fits the theory, complements it and gives the best possible case to further evolve it.

Theme 6 - Reflection

This week we were supposed to pick both a paper that was using qualitative methods as well as a paper using the case study method. I found this very hard, having only read one text about case study research. Finding the differences just from reading the abstracts from a bunch of papers and to pick one which seemed both interesting and fulfilled the criteria was not an easy task. When I finally had found one which I thought would be a good fit for the case study method, I started to analyze it according to the different steps a case study is built upon found in Eisenhardts text. I soon realized that the paper I had chosen didn’t fulfill many of the steps and that it probably was not a case study. Ah well. Otherwise I found this week to be more fun than earlier weeks, partly because the texts I had chosen as well as the mandatory ones were really interesting to read, and partly because the end of the course is approaching.

I prepared this week by reading the mandatory text on social as well as choosing two texts from the examples. Since we had already read a lot about qualitative studies I don’t feel that I learned anything new in that area. Something new that I did learn about was about case study research, what is regarded as a case study, what it is used for, when and where to use it and what parts it includes.

On the seminar we mostly talked about which paper that was using the case study research method we had chosen. It was interesting to find out that most of our group all had chosen texts which, even though some of them had case study in the title, were in fact not using the case study research method.

Theme 5 - Reflection

This week I have read the texts “Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration.” and “Finding design qualities in a tangible programming space” as well as “Differentiated Driving Range”. Even though there were three different texts to read I didn’t find this week to be very cumbersome, partly because the language weren’t that hard to comprehend and partly because I found them to be somewhat fun to read. Since we didn’t have to pick our own papers or journals it was easier and faster to begin the task and to get into the texts. I think I understood most of the material, and only needed to look up some words, I also found the texts to be kind of well paced and grouped together in a way which encouraged continuous reading. Some texts earlier in the course were not as easily comprehensible and needed quite a few stops to think about what I had just read, just to understand it.

We didn’t have a seminar for this week's theme and thus I did not prepare anything special, like questions and such. I don’t think it was a good trade off with another lecture instead of a seminar since I have learned a lot more on the group discussions than on the lecture.

As the theme suggests we learned a lot about design and the process and intentions behind it. How prototypes play a big part in development, what they are good for and where they stop helping. I have also learned about different forms of data, primarily empirical data. What it is, what it’s good for, how to gather and analyze it and also how to compare it.

Earlier weeks there have mostly been a couple questions which made it feel like I could put a lot of focus on them. This week, however, there were pretty many questions to answer which made it feel like i learned less about more. I guess that doesn’t have to be bad, but it’s different.

Theme 6 - Qualitative and case study research

Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?
I have chosen to read the paper “ Validation and Application of Electronic Propinquity Theory to Computer-Mediated Communication in Groups“ by Joseph B. Walther and Natalya N. Bazarova. (2008). The paper aims to present how the presence of alternate, digital communication media as well as some other factors affect the psychological feeling of nearness and how satisfactory the communication feels.

They conducted this research by observing test groups which were using some of these communication measures. This method is purely qualitative which means it doesn’t give a generalized picture of a whole society, instead they get results which depend heavily on the participants. On the other hand they get data which could not be gathered quantitatively. It’s really hard to measure true satisfaction or certain feelings through surveys and similar methods.

What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?
Since I already knew what qualitative methods is I don’t really feel that I picked up something groundbreaking new regarding them. However they talked a lot about a theory they used to conduct the research which they feel had some faults and later corrected for them. They explain how their research was conducted, how the participants was tested and observed. Maybe I learned a bit about the importance of critically examine source theory material and to be very objective and thorough.

Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?
I think they did a great job with the qualitative method they used. I found that they really had thought of everything. They had a large sample group, even though it was qualitative. They had set up multiple different test scenarios so that the result would be as wide as it could be. They critically examined the theory of which they based their research so that there would be no margin errors. Maybe they could have done some quantitative methods to further broaden the results gathered by the, in comparison to quantitative methods, small number of participants. The data they gathered are, as I mentioned earlier, not so generalizable, something that possibly could have been with some more research. 

Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.

According to Eisenhardt in the article "Building Theories from Case Study Research" a case study aims to analyse an event or a person, something that is happening. It investigates the phenomenon in a context which could be compared to real life with a focus on the understanding and exploration of the dynamics which are presented in a certain single setting. The data you get when conducting research this way are often empirically valid as well as testable.

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.

I have chosen to analyze the paper “Towards practical, high-capacity, low-maintenance information storage in synthesized DNA.” by Goldman, N. et al. (2013). Which is about storing digital data as synthesized DNA. Cool stuff. It isn’t about trying to collect data to prove a point, instead they prove that something can be perform a certain way using a certain method.

The steps declared in Eisenhardts research paper is: Getting Started, Selecting Cases, Crafting Instruments and Protocols, Entering the Field, Analyzing Data, Shaping Hypotheses, Enfolding Literature and at last Reaching Closure.

As most papers this one of course has both strengths and weaknesses, they don’t fulfill all of the steps. For example they don’t really define any research questions, instead they describe the method which they use to prove how something could be achievable. They declare how they have gotten their information and thoroughly analyzed the conditions. Since they performed actual tests the data was gathered qualitatively and compared with earlier similar works.

Theme 4 - Reflection

Like last week we were supposed to pick a journal and a paper, which I did. Now that I had already done it once before it became substantially easier to pick and extract information now that I knew more than before what to look for. However unlike what I thought when I picked the paper, the one I had chosen was not very interesting nor fun to read, which slowed down the reading and analyzing process. Despite feeling more advantageous I had trouble really understanding the text. We also read the text ‘Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality’. 

The paper was about looking to see if major search engines ‘favorited’ popular sites over less popular ones, alas if they are biased. The paper used quantitative methods in form of a bot to crawl around the sites which were in the top of the search-list, regarding different root words. As I understand the bot searched for certain words which were related to the root words and ordered them based on frequency and how they linked to other sites with similar content. I don’t really think this is a great way of determining if sites are ‘better’ than others, just because certain words are used more. I also have a hard time of figuring out ways to combine the quantitative data gathered with qualitative methods, it feels almost impossible regarding the problem. 

On the seminar we talked mostly about the paper regarding drum-patterns. I realized I had missed some parts of the paper, possibly by simply overlooking them while reading the text. I think the major way I contributed to the seminar was by asking leading questions to understand the parts that I initially missed, and to drive discussion as well as giving my opinions on the things I actually understood. 

I learned mostly about stereotyping from the drum-text, how initial thoughts impact our way of acting. (The black guy was dressed in a hoodie and the white in business attire, really?) I also learned alot about quantitative and qualitative methods of gathering data, what they are good for, how they are used, what advantages and disadvantages they have and such.

Theme 5 - Design Research

How can media technologies be evaluated?
In the article ‘Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration.’ by Réhman, S., Sun, J., Liu, L., & Li, H. (2008) they used user studies to evaluate media technologies. Which gives good, subjective feedback. However I believe it is important to perform these studies in a situation and environment in which they are later to be used, otherwise the results may be somewhat skewed.

What role will prototypes play in research?
I think prototyping makes it clearer for the researcher how the product are/will be used. This gives him insight into the possibilities of the product and what things are necessary to focus on. That information is really viable when conducting research.

What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?
A prototype can never be a perfect, finished product. The meaning of prototyping is development, to see what works and what needs to be changed. What is missing and possibly what is abundant. To try out new ideas and to iteratively redesign and evolve into something a bit better with each version. A prototype always has room for improvement, because when it has not, it’s finished, and not longer a prototype. Prototypes could be released early, for testing and research and doesn’t have to work perfect. A finished product should on the other hand not be released to early, and should not fall short.

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What is the 'empirical data' in these two papers?
In the paper ‘Finding design qualities in a tangible programming space’ by Fernaeus & Tholander they mostly collected data by watching and analyzing participants using the programming environment they set up. While in the other paper ‘Differentiated Driving Range’ by Anders Lundström the empirical data was extracted from online conversations, interviews and information based on prototyping.

Can practical design work in itself be considered a 'knowledge contribution'?
I think so. When designing and then testing new systems for real, you gain knowledge and get an insight into what is working and what is not, if it’s even relevant to use in the real world.

Are there any differences in design intentions within a research project, compared to design in general?
The way I understand it is that designing for the purpose of research is to gain new knowledge of an established system. While designing in general is more about creating and establishing a system for users. In that way they both realize a system but with different intentions.

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?
This is a really hard question and my thought is that they are not replicable since research are based on very many factors such as time, location, setting, quality and so on. 

Are there any important differences with design driven research compared to other research practices?
I think the difference is that general research are based mainly on observations where design driven research has its focus on the conceptual side. Design driven research are ment to intervene and improve.