söndag 11 oktober 2015
Theme 5 - reflection post
This week
had a different setup compared to the other weeks, instead of having one
lecture and one seminar we had two lectures. The two lectures differed quite a
bit, the first one was in my opinion the better one, it felt more prepared and
had a structure. The second one I think would have been better if was in a
different setting, like a seminar. Because it was a very interesting person who
held the lecture, but since he did not know that he was about to have this
lecture it become pretty messy and confusing at times.
Part one:
Habio Li
had the fist lecture and it was about the process and the five steps from
getting an idea to selling it.
Step one: How to come up with an idea?
There are
many problems that we have to day, what you need to do is to define one problem. It is when you have
done that you can move on to find the idea of a solution. Li explained that if
you spend 90% of you effort in defining the problem and 10% on solving it you
will find a much better solution than you would if you spent your time the
opposite.
Step two: How to filter the idea?
If you get
more than one good idea, how should you choose the one? One way is to ask you
questions like:
- - Does
the solution address the pain point of the problem?
- - Can
I do it, with the knowledge and the existing technology?
Li also
talked about finding the billion-dollar idea, you should think of if you can
make any money of you idea. I am a bit conflicted to that statement, for me
personally I am not doing it the money and I think if you are I could lead that
you never will be satisfied. I think that there are many great ideas even
though you won´t earn billions of dollars of it. But I am not naïve, money is a
important factor so I do agree that it is a important to consider.
Step three: How to validate a good idea?
Proof of
concept, you should be able to see how the solution will help with the problem.
By doing this being able to see its feasibility.
Step four: Evaluate the idea.
Make a
prototype of the idea so that you can let others try it and give their view of
it. By doing this you idea can develop into something even better. You can make
sure that other people will understand how to use it and understand the purpose
of it.
Step five: Marketing, selling the idea.
By now you
understand the value of your idea but now you have to make sure that potential
investors understand it too.
Overall I
think it gave a good idea of how the workflow can look like and I think Li made
a good point with explaining the importance potting effort in understanding the
problem first. If you do that the rest of the steps will be easier.
Part two:
During the
lecture we talked about prototypes and if it can be seen as a research tool. And the answer is yes, but it is one part of
the method, which also contains research question, design and analysis.
Research
method:
"Interviews
is a stupid way to gain knowledge I you don´t do anything with it".
So the
importance is to have a good analysis of what you get from the interviews.
In the
study of Anders Lundström the process was the imperial data – experimental
design together with a small analysis (stat of the art) and interviews.
fredag 9 oktober 2015
theme 6 - first post
The paper I read was “Connected scholars: Examining the
role of social media in research practices of faculty using the UTAUT model” a research paper published in Computers
in Human Behaviour. The paper was about how scholars use social
media to not only to find out what social media tools they used but also
“discover factors that influence intention and use of social media by
scholars”. I thought it was a pretty interesting to read since it was a study
that I could relate to. During my whole time at KTH I have used social media to
communicate with other student and shared information. This course itself is a
very good example of this as well, we use blogs as a way to present new
knowledge for each theme and read other blogs and comment on them.
1.
Which qualitative method or methods are
used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these
methods?
The qualitative method in this paper was semi-structured interviews on 51 scholars from different parts of the world and positions. The benefit of using this method is that you can collect data regarding how and why but asking question of that sort and being able letting the participant to elaborate. But also allowing the participant to speak more freely and not being so influenced (hopefully) by the interviewer. The limitation is that it can vary a lot between different interviews, it is only logical that you get more data form a 40 minutes long interview than one that lasts for 15. And it can more difficult as an interviewer to stay as neutral as possible when you by just simple body language can influence the participant’s answer.
The qualitative method in this paper was semi-structured interviews on 51 scholars from different parts of the world and positions. The benefit of using this method is that you can collect data regarding how and why but asking question of that sort and being able letting the participant to elaborate. But also allowing the participant to speak more freely and not being so influenced (hopefully) by the interviewer. The limitation is that it can vary a lot between different interviews, it is only logical that you get more data form a 40 minutes long interview than one that lasts for 15. And it can more difficult as an interviewer to stay as neutral as possible when you by just simple body language can influence the participant’s answer.
2.
What did you learn about qualitative
methods from reading the paper?
- I liked how they did the coding of the data, independently coded the data to find themes in the answers and then compared to see what similarities they could find. That for me was an interesting way of analysing the collected data.
- They used UTAUT, Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, which normally is used to analyse quantitative data but now was used in a different domain. This was to get out more specific factors that may influence the scholars. And by using this they could easily include other factor on who said what, like gender, age and so on.
- I liked how they did the coding of the data, independently coded the data to find themes in the answers and then compared to see what similarities they could find. That for me was an interesting way of analysing the collected data.
- They used UTAUT, Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, which normally is used to analyse quantitative data but now was used in a different domain. This was to get out more specific factors that may influence the scholars. And by using this they could easily include other factor on who said what, like gender, age and so on.
3.
Which are the main methodological
problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods
have been improved?
- I am not sure how good it was to use UTAUT to analyse the data, I wonder if it took away something since it treated qualitative data as quantitative.
- I never read about if they tested the questions, validate them for the interviews before the actual interviews, even if the aim was for the participant to lead the conversation I think they should have tested the prewritten questions.
- I am not sure how good it was to use UTAUT to analyse the data, I wonder if it took away something since it treated qualitative data as quantitative.
- I never read about if they tested the questions, validate them for the interviews before the actual interviews, even if the aim was for the participant to lead the conversation I think they should have tested the prewritten questions.
---------
For this next part I read From humor recognition to irony
detection: The figurative language of social media a research paper published in Data & Knowledge Engineering. It is a paper about
providing a insight into usage of language transmit emotions in social media.
1.
Briefly explain to a first year university student
what a case study is.
I had some trouble understanding case study by only reading Building Theories from Case Study Research, so I did some research on my on so I could get a better view of it. It is when you do a depth study of a particular event, field instead of more general study. It is a detailed examination of a subject, which is the so called case. You do full evaluation of the case, this method is used to narrow down a very broad field. By doing a case study you can build a theory around the case.
I had some trouble understanding case study by only reading Building Theories from Case Study Research, so I did some research on my on so I could get a better view of it. It is when you do a depth study of a particular event, field instead of more general study. It is a detailed examination of a subject, which is the so called case. You do full evaluation of the case, this method is used to narrow down a very broad field. By doing a case study you can build a theory around the case.
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.
1, Getting started. - The study had I good introduction, it is clear and work seems so be structured in a goof way.
2, Selecting case. – Narrowed It down to two emotions, irony and humour.
3, Crafting instruments and protocols. – They did a lot literature research and “performed some experiments”, but I do not know of what kind which I see a as a weakness. But the got a lot quantitative data from 50,000 texts from twitter to analyse which if good.
4, Entering the field. –I am not really sure I understand this step, but I would say that since step 3 was well performed this step might not be as prioritised.
5, Analysing data. – This was a strength in this study the used different tools to analyse the data, inter alia SRITL Toolkit.
6, Shaping hypotheses. – In the discussion they describe the features, but I would not say that they present a hypotheses and that is a weakness according to the evaluation.
7, Enfolding literature. – Through out the paper I think they did well on using literature.
8, Reaching closure. – The conclusion present the result and how the theory can be used in the future.
1, Getting started. - The study had I good introduction, it is clear and work seems so be structured in a goof way.
2, Selecting case. – Narrowed It down to two emotions, irony and humour.
3, Crafting instruments and protocols. – They did a lot literature research and “performed some experiments”, but I do not know of what kind which I see a as a weakness. But the got a lot quantitative data from 50,000 texts from twitter to analyse which if good.
4, Entering the field. –I am not really sure I understand this step, but I would say that since step 3 was well performed this step might not be as prioritised.
5, Analysing data. – This was a strength in this study the used different tools to analyse the data, inter alia SRITL Toolkit.
6, Shaping hypotheses. – In the discussion they describe the features, but I would not say that they present a hypotheses and that is a weakness according to the evaluation.
7, Enfolding literature. – Through out the paper I think they did well on using literature.
8, Reaching closure. – The conclusion present the result and how the theory can be used in the future.
måndag 5 oktober 2015
Theme 4 - reflection post
The theme
for week 4 seminar was quantitative research
and for this week we read one paper made by Johan Östman, How
involvement in user-generated content relates to democratic engagement among
young people and
one made by Ilias Bergström and some colleagues of him called Drumming in
immersive virtual reality. I
prepared by reading them two and reflected on the different questions. I found
that both text was quite easy to understand but the one made by Östman was
unfortunately not that interesting to me. But the theme was about quantitative
research and for that aspect I found both texts good.
As usual there was a lecture followed by a seminar
which I attended and It was Ilias that held them both. During the lecture Ilias
talked about different methods on how to collect data and the importance of
making sure that you are getting the right kind of data for your question. He
also mentioned on what independent and dependent variable was and gave a good
example:
Independent variable – how many beers will I drink.
Dependent variable – how drunk will I be.
The second one depends on how many I drink
One common way of collecting quantitative data is
by doing questioners. But if you choose to do that it is very important to get
it right, validate it. Make sure that the people that will answer it understands
the questions so that the can answer correctly. This research method was used
in the paper by Östman but like a said in my fist post I never read about the
questioner being tested, so again that was a big mistake if that was the case.
The importance with having solid data is because
data play a fundamental role and is needed to support the logical argument.
Just having data on it own says very little.
The seminar was pretty much the same as usual, we sat in
small groups and discussed the theme of the week. At first we discussed Ilias
text since it was something everyone had read. At first we all got a bit
confused by the fact that Ilias explained that the whole study was
quantitative. This was confusing to u since we thought that the data they got
from the electronic sensors was qualitative. I am not really sure why I though
that but now I agree with Ilias. Form the sensors they got tons of data from
every little move the users did and therefor it is quantitative data.
One of the major topics we discussed was that you
have to let the question of the study determent the research method and in some
sense the target group. One example was the question: “how does people who listen to rock vote?” according to Ilias it would not be interesting to do a quantitative
study since it would take away the complexity of the question. And that make
sense, if the study have a humanistic character it would be better to do a
qualitative research. To break it down you could divide it:
If you have the question “what do they like” it is quantitative
and if you have the question “why" it should be qualitative.
Over all I hink I got a better understanding for the fundamental role the research play in a study and what quantitative research is and what it is not.
fredag 2 oktober 2015
Theme 5 - first post
Part 1
1.
How can media
technologies be evaluated?
There are many different ways to evaluate media technologies but in the paper “Turn your mobile into the ball: rendering live football game using vibration” they performed a usability evaluation. This meant to evaluate three aspects:
There are many different ways to evaluate media technologies but in the paper “Turn your mobile into the ball: rendering live football game using vibration” they performed a usability evaluation. This meant to evaluate three aspects:
· Effectiveness – To
find out if the system good enough to accomplish the task by calculating the
error-rate.
· Efficiency – To find
out the effort is takes to accomplish the task by measuring the users reaction
time.
· Satisfaction – to find
out what the users think about the system and the use of it.
2.
What role will
prototypes play in research?
In study like this the prototype is very important, the data from the prototype evaluation will be essential for the development. The prototype will help the study go forward in a fast and pretty easy way. By doing a prototype first before the actual product will make it possible to find the limitations and still have time to make changes. In a broader perspective having a prototype will save you money and in the end you will have a stronger product in the end.
In study like this the prototype is very important, the data from the prototype evaluation will be essential for the development. The prototype will help the study go forward in a fast and pretty easy way. By doing a prototype first before the actual product will make it possible to find the limitations and still have time to make changes. In a broader perspective having a prototype will save you money and in the end you will have a stronger product in the end.
3.
Why could it be
necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?
This is to get an understanding for how the prototype will work in different aspects so that you can understand its purpose and verify that it has potential of being used. This is made so the prototypes will the best as it can be, before any users can try it.
This is to get an understanding for how the prototype will work in different aspects so that you can understand its purpose and verify that it has potential of being used. This is made so the prototypes will the best as it can be, before any users can try it.
4.
What are
characteristics and limitations of prototypes?
What the characteristics of a prototype are that it might still be “rough around the edges” it is the first try of the actual product and has not been exposed for any tests or other users´ opinions. The prototypes are built on the original idea and what are tried to be accomplish. The limitations of prototypes are the fact it have not been tested by others so you cannot know how others will be able to understand it, or if it even is doing what it is suppose to do.
What the characteristics of a prototype are that it might still be “rough around the edges” it is the first try of the actual product and has not been exposed for any tests or other users´ opinions. The prototypes are built on the original idea and what are tried to be accomplish. The limitations of prototypes are the fact it have not been tested by others so you cannot know how others will be able to understand it, or if it even is doing what it is suppose to do.
5.
How can design
research be communicated/presented?
I am not 100 % sure on what “design research” means from the text itself but I did some more research on my own and found that it involves the work before the process of design, and also within the process of design. So how you can present this should be presenting the prototype or showing pictures of it and having texts that explain how it works.
I am not 100 % sure on what “design research” means from the text itself but I did some more research on my own and found that it involves the work before the process of design, and also within the process of design. So how you can present this should be presenting the prototype or showing pictures of it and having texts that explain how it works.
Part 2
-What
is the 'empirical data' in these two papers?
In the paper Finding Design Qualities in a Tangible
Programming Space they got their empirical data through observations on how
children interacted with the experimental designs. And in the other paper Differentiated driving range: exploring a
solution to the problems with the “guess-o-meter” in electric cars the data
was by doing a stat-of-art analysis and an iterative design exploration and interviews . This was
to get data about how the guess-o-meter worked and its problems.
-Can practical design work in itself be considered a
'knowledge contribution'?
Yes I would say that practical work at it self absolutely can contribute with knowledge. We have all heard the saying "learn by doing". By working with the design you can found out new things and can therefore also develop the design based on the new knowledge.
Yes I would say that practical work at it self absolutely can contribute with knowledge. We have all heard the saying "learn by doing". By working with the design you can found out new things and can therefore also develop the design based on the new knowledge.
- Are there any differences in design intentions within a research project, compared to design in general?
Research project is developed under special circumcises, and I guess the aim and intentions with the design is also different. A design within a research project has the aim to get more or even new knowledge about something. By having and using the design will be the tool to get data that you otherwise would not be able to get. Other designs in general will be used differently and do not have the same focus on providing with knowledge but instead make sure it works as it should and fulfils it purpose.
- 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 that the research of the study should depend on the aim of the study. I think you can get a real good insight of the problem by doing research of this kind but I think you have to put in the work so that the data is solid. The tech domains are always developing and there are still things that could be better so by developing new prototypes so users can test is a great way of seeing if your idea is good or not. But it is important to put in the effort so that it actually works in the right way.
- Are there any important differences with design driven research compared to other research practices?
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