Theme 6 reflections

For the last theme in this course the lecture got canceled so we wasn’t presented with any new perspective from the lecture. The seminar took place as usual and we sat in groups and discussed the theme of the week. We had all read different papers and I presented my findings along with the fact that I had problems to understand how the paper “Building Theories from Case Study Research” defined “case study”. In the beginning of the paper I understand that they meant I process or tool to create theory that didn’t exist or wasn’t close enough to the field of science before the execution of the research.  But later in the text they define it in a more recognized fashion with the sentence “The case study is a research strategy, which focuses on understanding the dynamics present within single settings”. If I am not mistaken I believe that Illas said in the seminar that the case study is to be seen as “a constructed frame made of fixed attributes where the thesis can be tested”. I feel that I probably need to read up on this prior to my master thesis to be able to handle the case study, if needed.

Theme 4 comments

1. http://aris-totall-loss.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-4-in-retrospect.html?showComment=1444659898586
2. http://theoryandmethodmediatechnology.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-4-quantitative-research-after.html?showComment=1444660400960
3. http://blog4course99.blogspot.se/2015/10/reflection-on-theme-4.html?showComment=1444668746841
4. http://rchcc.blogspot.se/2015/10/reflection-of-theme4.html?showComment=1444669185623
5. http://meglia.blogspot.se/2015/10/post-theme-4.html?showComment=1444669918697

Theme 5 reflections

As always I don’t feel that the lectures was that informal, although Haibo’s lecture was interesting. Especially the first part of the lecture when he discussed the fundamentals in engineering in two simple steps:

Define the problem.

Solve the problem.

Further more he also stated that it is a good distribution in time to dedicate 90% on defining the problem and 10% at solving the problem. If you manage to define the problem accurate it can help a lot in the solving part of the process, and if you do not come up with a solution to the defined problem then the work you have done will probably contribute to the development within the field of the question. If you did a good work by defined the problem prior to the solving part. The second lecture for the week I didn’t care much for so I got nothing to say other than it didn’t contribute to the course at all, at least for me.

Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

This week we have all been reading two new papers and analyzed them within the frame of the course. One of the papers should include a quantitative element in the research and the other paper should include a case study approach. For the first paper I read “Noise in an intensive care unit” which is a rather short paper that discuss the possible problem with high and continuous noise in an ICU. The authors made use of data collection from surveys and measuring. The surveys targeted the staff and the measures the noise in the ICU. It is clear that the survey in this paper is the qualitative part of the research and that the measures are the quantitative part. For me it makes actually more sense to focus on the staff’s opinions and perception of the noise rather than the actually noise in it self. But as always when it comes to gather information or data from people there is always some uncertainty in the data collected and I don’t know if you can account for this uncertainty in a quantifiable manner? Still I think that if you are to undertake a research project that involves how some object/process/event affects people you should value the affected peoples views on the matter higher than possible collected data. Can’t say that I actually learn that much from the paper’s methodology but I think that they could have included the patience in the survey as well. They would probably have more to say about the noise than those who work in this noisy environment.

For the second paper we have read a paper that involved a case study of some sort. I’ll start with give my understanding of what a case study is and why you would be interested or enforced to include a case study in a paper.

A case study can be necessary when the available theory doesn’t include the field you are about to research. This can be because of shifting or new technology, which in ICT case are bound to happen sooner than later, considering the exponential development in the field. In the end your case study will be the major theory in your paper, or the tool you use to support you theory. This was my understanding what a case study refers to, after I had read the paper “Building Theories from Case Study Research”. Now to the tricky part, I can’t seem to find a paper that is structured strictly on this approach presented in the paper above. So I have instead looked at a paper and tried to think of the case study as research that make use of a case study as a method to examine a problem under certain given conditions. Although in the paper “Building Theories from Case Study Research” (BTCSR) it is stated that:

The case study is a research strategy, which focuses on understanding the dynamics present within single settings.

So I might not be that far of in my interpretation.

The paper I have read is “The firm, the platform and the customer: A “double mangle” interpretation of social media for innovation” and explore the relationship between human actors and technology in the context of a social media platform. The paper starts with defining the aim of the paper, which is “The tuning process through which the technological and the social achieve an interactive stability”. I can’t say that the paper talked about their case study as a generic one at first but instead presented exactly what the attributes of the case study would be. As of the BTCSR paper it is stated that it is good practice to first work with a generic case study, which not specify the “attributes”. The paper in question did however combine both qualitative and quantitative data and compared their analyzed data with previous theories that they also presented in the introduction in the paper. They did also reach conclusion in both the theoretical and practical area of the research ad present these findings in the end of the paper. A last remark of the paper is that it had a horribly layout and made it hard to read.

Theme 3 comments

1. http://aris-totall-loss.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-in-retrospect.html#comment-form

2. http://theoryandmethodmediatechnology.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-research-and-theory-after.html?showComment=1444044812860

3. http://blog4course99.blogspot.se/2015/09/reflection-on-theme3.html?showComment=1444045432757

4. http://rchcc.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme3-reflection.html?showComment=1444045854305

5. http://gamlagreker.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-reflection.html?showComment=1444047541926

Theme 4 reflections

After this weeks theme I would say that I have not change my mind about what quantitative research is about. The lecture reconfirmed my understanding that quantitative research is, simply put, merely about the numbers. It is more to it than just numbers of course. Like how you gather, arrange and present the numbers in an objectively manner. According to the lecture we gather quantitative data by asking, measure or observing and then interpreting the collected data with the help of statistic tests. Further more we were presented with Illias report that we also had to read up on prior to the lecture and the seminar. I think that this part wasn’t that interesting at all or rather that the course is kind of misplaced in the course plan. The course is scheduled after we are done with our bachelor thesis and almost 1,5 years before our master thesis. This makes the course fail to be relevant, sadly enough. Once again I would say that the seminar didn’t delivered any hallelujah moment if any kind. In my group we literary had nothing more to say than to agree with each other’s thoughts we had prior to the week’s theme and then we started to chat about our bachelor theses. I would say that our talk about the theses was actually kind of interesting. At least for me.

Theme 5: Design research

Before I begin to answer or discuss the question for theme 5 I would like to state that the answer to these questions are very dependent on the context, even within the field of ICT there isn’t a model of how to evaluate every single technology in the media field.

The first paper we read this week was “Turn your mobile into the ball”. The paper reviewed the possibilities to render dynamic live data to the end-user by using a mobile phones vibrator. In this certain case the presentation consisted of both quantified test data and qualitative data from questionnaires. Both of these data comes from either interaction with the product/service or by observation according to the HCI field. So to answer the first question I would say that you need both the measureable data and the observed data evaluate the ICT at hand.

Prototypes is important to be able to test the concept and also, in a early stage be able to eliminate as many possible errors that might occur due to poor design in the product. There is also a good practice to see if your idea is feasible, if it turns out that it’s not then it might be a good idea to try to change the starting point for the project. It depends what function of the product will be evaluated. Is it the layout of a menu or is it the usability of the menu? For the first one it could be sufficient with a plain paper sketch to test out how end-users receive the design/layout. If you instead want to test the usability of the same menu you probably need a more advanced prototype with the possibility to interact with the prototype and to get live feedback in some way. The limitations will be set by the function being evaluated (sometimes it might actually turn out to be “almost-as-intended-in-retail”) and the characteristics would be that it’s built in a manner to be able to handle the test case.  I do favor the HCI approach when it comes to presentation, with the focus on the end user because, in the end it matters little that you built the best product according to the numbers if the end users feel the opposite.  I would say that the same statement holds true with ICT if the technology are meant to be used be the end-user and not on SP level.

For the last part of this theme we read the texts “Finding design qualities in a tangible programming space” and “Differentiated driving range”. The texts both present researches in the HCI field in some sort of way. In the first text it’s more obvious then in the second text. I think all practice in some extent contribute to the general knowledge in a given research field, but far from all contribute new and solid knowledge.

To the question if there is any difference in the design intentions within a research project and to the general case of design I would say yes. Most of the time within the field of research of technology I believe that you set out to try to answer a very specific question related between two or more object whilst in the more general case you probably aim for a design that hold high affordance in the eyes of the many.

Are these kind of research replicable as given in the last to texts? In the first text I find it very unlikely that one could get the exact same result even with the same test group because of the dynamic of input variables. In the last text the focus isn’t really on the end-users ability to understand the technology but rather to be able to understand the output, in this case that would be “miles left to drive on the battery as is”. Because the research focus on the possibility to be able to calculate the battery life under circumstances that are, compared with us humans, rather fixed or at least fluctuating in a manner that makes it possible to take them into consideration when developing the estimation model. When it comes down to design no matter the field in question I think the big difference is that the focus should be on the end-user even if the technology or design are to find in the lower levels of the product or service. In a non-design scenario I think that this is not the case.