Theme 5: Design Research

Part one of this theme was to read a paper by Haibo Li (et al) called Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration and reflect on it with the help of some questions as follows:

1. How can media technologies be evaluated? 

2. What role will prototypes play in research? 

3. What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes? 

4. How can design research be communicated/presented? 

The second part included reading two texts co-penned by authors Eva-Lotta Sallnäs Pysander and Jonas Moll in 2013 and 2011 and reflect over the following questions: 

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

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

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

My thoughts on the texts: 

Part 1:

When it comes to media technologies, enhancing the experience is key word for developing new ideas. Technology is evolving fast today and in order to keep that experience I believe that a functioning prototype and having the ability to test the usability are essential for proper evaluation. That is also the focus in the report, which is about using vibrations to render live football games.

Prototypes are important for testing the hypothesis of the research. When it comes to media technology a large part of researching is built on developing new products and new ways of using media and testing a concept is crucial to get any kind of result and being able to move forward in your research. Without prototypes explaining the concept to the user the research ill be unattainable. The main advantage of using a prototype is that the user gets a sincere sense of how a potential final product would behave. By using questionnaires and other theoretical methods the user can imagine what the product would be like but there's always going to be a limitation compared to testing a working prototype. With a prototype the user might present "live" reactions that they would not have considered when imagining a theoretical scenario. It is critical to remember that a prototype is not a finished product, or even a beta product, and is not fully developed. Users might be unhappy with the design and may, for example, give the prototype a lower and unrepresentative rating during user tests. Thus, the researcher should be clear about the differences that may occur to not deceive users and avoid misunderstandings.

Part 2:

Having a collaborative setting has its differences compared to a single-user setting and it depends on the situation whether they are advantages or disadvantages. When you have several test persons working in a collaborative setting the emotional data is going to differ from the single-user since the group will work together and one users' input to a problem might wake something in another person's mind that would not have come up in the single setting. I think working in a group (with satisfying group dynamics) will lead to solving the task in a more efficient and resourceful way and the participants will form a companionship towards each other but it will be difficult for the researcher to evaluate each individual process. In a single setting the process becomes more apparent but it may also be a bit limiting as previously mentioned since the user cannot contrive ideas from any co-users.

For a refined result within media technology that is general and fitting for a large target group, but at the same time can be cognitively analyzed, both qualitative and quantitative methods should me used. Larger quantitative studies such as questionnaires or simpler user tests (perhaps even online tests) will give the study a width, but I would say that it is also important to have advanced user tests and interviews that ca be analyzed in order to gain an understanding of the users and how they react and respond to the prototype. 

By looking objectively on a test person's attributes and their actions during a test and then combining this with subjective methods to learn about their experiences the researcher can gain more knowledge than by using only one or the other method. As mentioned in the previous section the combination is what will give the study a width and it will help the researcher to find a conclusion and find ideas for the development of the prototype.