Pre-reflection of Theme 5: Design research

Part one

The paper Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration by Haibo Li and his colleagues was about in which way we should synchronize a live football game and the moving ball to a cell phone. Depending on where the ball is, which team who has it for example, different kind of vibrations will be sent to the phone.    

How can media technologies be evaluated?

Since there are endless amounts of different products and services (things we use by looking at them, interacting with it for example) in several areas regarding media technologies, that leads to a couple methods of evaluating each of them. In this specific article where we want to connect a live football game to a cell phone, they’re using a usability evaluation, that of course can be applied on other studies as well. This method evaluate the usability of a product according to three different aspects:

• Effectiveness
• Satisfaction
• Efficiency

The effectiveness part is investigating if a specific task could be accomplished with the specified system. One way of measuring effectiveness is by calculating the error-rate. Satisfaction is measured by looking how comfortable and accepted a system is according to the user. In this study this was measured by questionnaires answered by the participants. Finally, efficiency is how much effort one is needed to put in to complete a task. In this case, this was done by measuring the users reaction time.

What role will prototypes play in research?

When it comes down to research, i think prototypes have a big role in how you should go on and develop your work. Since we today have modern techniques and can use 3D-printers etc. for prototypes, its even more current and the way we can find out how our product works, which parts that doesn’t and how we should improve it in an early stage could be very time saving. To detect problems early, like the way they found that the product was uncomfortable in this specific study, helps a lot in the developing process and you’ll have plenty of time adjusting it until the release of the final product.

Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?

As i understood “a proof of concept prototype” is that you do it before the actual creating of the prototype in order to investigate what possibilities and disadvantages there are. The researchers has the chance to adjust and give input before the prototype is made, and therefore make sure that the prototype itself will be as good as possible. It can be used when the idea of a product is hard to imagine and we want to test it on some users.

What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?

A prototype could be seen as a foretaste of the final product which leaves us with some limitations but also good characteristics of it. What limits a prototype is that it could be very expensive if the user find some problem that needs to be adjusted and thereafter create a new prototype and so on. This is also very time inefficiently. What’s good though is that a prototype is formed like the idea of a final product. The tester can therefore find errors and problems that can be removed. This help the producers a lot in the developing stage.

How can design research be communicated/presented?

To present a design research, by using a prototype for example, is a good way for the audience to get a preview of the final product. I think that visualizing and demonstrating a prototype is far more efficient than printing out a manual regarding the product for the consumer. However, some sort of combining text with the prototype is of course necessary in order to get a good overview.

Part two

How does a collaborative setting differ from a single user setting as regards methodology used and the results obtained?

What differs a collaborative setting to a single user setting is that when you consider a collaborative setting it is a group of two or more testers and the result you get will be a compilation of all the users. The advantage of this though, is that in a collaborative setting you can get a several different views of the exactly same study since a group of people often perceive things differently. On the other hand, analyzing a single user is more comfortable for the researcher because only one person has to be examined and evaluated.

How can qualitative and quantitative methods in the same study complement each other?

Since qualitative and quantitative methods both have different advantages and limitations, combining these two into one study could lead to a better and more credible result than just using one of them. We should also be aware of that this is not always the case. However, combining these two methods could be done by starting of with a survey for a large number of people in order to get an useful overview and thereafter move on to a qualitative method regarding something you want to investigate deeper as a result of the survey, using interviews for example.

How can using both subjective and objective methods give a better understanding of a phenomenon?

This could almost be quasi to the comparison of quantitative versus qualitative methods and how they as one could lead to a better understanding of something you investigate. In this case, using subjective method is directly based on perceptions and thoughts from a person while objective methods is not based on a person’s thoughts, but more on independent experiments and collected data for example. By combining subjective and objective methods and complement a study with one or the other where it’s needed to fill the gap, a clearer overview and better understanding of a phenomenon could be achieved.