Blog comments

1.1

I can really relate to your reflections around how we as engineers often are locked in our own way of thinking. And as a result of our own way of thinking it is really hard to understand the concepts which Kant and Socrates are talking about. But for the future, do you think that the concepts around forms of intuition and categories of understanding will affect your thinking around research and problem solving? Or do you think that we as engineers already are too locked in our own ways of approaching knowledge?

http://dm2572aslind.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme1-reflection.html?showComment=1413362518833

Hi Åsa.

1.2

Hi Daniel,

I agree that the first theme was difficult to understand, in a way i feel like we engineers are kind of locked in our own way of thinking and therefore it is hard to grasp philosophical concepts. Personally i feel like you would need to study some basic courses in philosophy to fully understand what Kant and Socrates are trying to say. However, i don't think that it is unnecessary mind wrestling to understand what knowledge is because of the fact understanding what constitutes knowledge, our forms of intuition and categories of understanding, can contribute to a new way of looking at objects and approaching different problems.

http://dm2572-dlindstrom.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-1-reflections.html?showComment=1413363569730

1.3

Hi Gabriella,

Interesting blog post! I would take your reflections about the categories of understanding a bit further by saying that what Kant is trying to say is that there is some kind of structure in the world. "unity", "limitations", "substance", "space" and "time" are categories of understanding and forms of intuition that make the world as it is, as it is, and gives the world a meaning for us humans. This is how i interpreted the text by Kant.

http://dm2572gsk.blogspot.se/2014/09/post-seminar-1.html?showComment=1413364568789

1.4

Heya!

I agree that the first weeks theme and texts were a bit abstract and hard to grasp, however the seminar was really helpful in my opinion! I think the important part to understand with Kant is that it is us, humans, that give meaning to the world through our forms of intuition and categories of understanding. Without us, humans, the world as we look at it would have no structure which is important to remember when we are discussing what knowledge really is.

1.5 

Hello!

I agree that as an engineer it was hard to look upon subjects like "knowledge" from an philosophical angle since we are not trained to look at things from an philosophical standpoint. What i think Kant is trying to say with his text critique of pure reason is rather what makes knowledge of electricity possible in the first place. Which i understood as through our categories of understanding (unity, plurality, substance, causality etc) and forms of intuition (space, time), which gives the world a sense of meaning and structure.

http://ferryjan.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-1-reflection.html
 

2.1

Overall good reflection! I did not quite understand your reflection about nominalism in relation to society. As I understood it, the purpose of nominalism in society was to break free from social constructions such as the "ideal" woman. However, the nominalistic view tends to overlook structures of power. Therefore there has to be a give and take between konceptualism and empirism.

http://ferryjan.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-2-reflection.html?showComment=1414602597135#c5901610708701934075

 

2.2

It seems like you really grasped a lot of the concepts that were covered during the second theme, good job! I especially like the thoughts around how there is a gap between what society we want to live in, and what society we currently are living in. I believe there has to be a balance between conceptual/empirical thinking in order to not generalise too much while at the same time regarding power structures in todays society, this way i think we as engineers can achieve great things for the future!

http://kthkurs.blogspot.se/2014/09/reflection-after-theme-2-use-of.html

2.3

Hi!

I agree that the texts were a lot easier to read compared to theme 1. Really good reflection around how you have to be aware of the writers situation in order to fully understand their opinions and perspectives. I totally agree that we have to live in a world with a balance between nominalistic and empiristic perspectives in order to achieve a better world and society!

Good job!

http://dm2572-dlindstrom.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-2-reflections.html?showComment=1414603849382#c6198497496964350822

2.4
Hi!

Interesting reclections around how we need to learn from our past in order to not make the same mistakes again. I guess you can relate to todays society, how people with Nazi backgrounds are gaining power in the swedish parlament. Even though i think we know more about our past today with the development of technologies such as internet etc, people seem to forget and ignore. Perhaps it is not about information spreading but rather about education and keeping an open mind toward society.

http://dm2572stipic.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-2-critical-media-studies_19.html?showComment=1414604548619#c7868051907136101027

2.5

Hi!

Totally agree that the texts for theme 2 were alot easier to read and grasp than the ones for theme 1. I agree that the cave example made it alot easier to fully understand the concepts. What i also liked a lot with this seminar was the fact that it was easier to connect to reality and how I think about things like the "ideal" woman etc. Furthermore, i really liked how you have to keep the writers situations in mind in order to fully understand the opinions and concepts.

http://dm2572johanhuu.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-2-reflection.html?showComment=1414604930606#c7359186713093853673

3.1

Hey!

I agree that this weeks theme was a lot easier to grasp and felt like something useful for the master thesis.

I had not thought about theory as a bridge between raw data and a hypothesis, interesting! As i understood it a theory is like a set of propositions or proven hypotheses that makes up a "system of thoughts" around a phenomenon, good theories therefore help us define new hypotheses which can lead to new theories. I guess that your reflection therefore is correct saying that our "normal" use of the word "theory" is somewhat incorrect from a scientific point of view. Perhaps "my hypothesis on the matter is...", but that just sounds wrong!

http://dm2572johanhuu.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-3-reflection.html?showComment=1414605625438#c7865145064869143832

3.2
Hi,

I totally agree that the assignment for the seminar was kind of hard, especially because what a theory is and isnt is, still, really hard to fully grasp. Therefore underlying theories in the papers we read like social capital, feminism and democracy were overlooked. I also agree that it is easier to define what a theory is not rather than what a theory is, but i guess that is usally the case when it comes to defining any concept really.

http://dm2572-dlindstrom.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-3-post.html?showComment=1414605974899#c1855540568637481376

3.3

Hi,

Really liked your reflection around research and the "Steady house". I guess that it is really important that you let the used theories "go to work" with the research data, not only building a steady house but also building a beautiful house. Both spending more time in the beginning and using the theories throughout research is something that I can relate to when thinking about my candidate thesis, it could have been so much better!

http://dm2572stipic.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-3-research-and-theory-reflection.html?showComment=1414606425873#c3515008555038379024

3.4

Hello,

I agree that this weeks theme was not as abstract as the more philosophical themes, however this theme was not really clear to me either. Picking a paper that you could enjoy reading really helped for this seminar, but i still had a hard time grasping what kind of theories were in there since the definition for me still is kind of vague.

http://kthkurs.blogspot.se/2014/09/reflection-after-theme-3.html?showComment=1414606719513#c15146538157471774

3.5

Hi,

I think that your reflections around how the "normal" use of the word theory differs from the scientific one is really good. Perhaps that is why it was hard defining what theories were used in the papers we picked. I dont know if i fully agree with your definition on a theory being a plan. I think it is rather so that a theory is constituted by a set of proven hypotheses that makes up a system of thoughts around a phenomenon, perhaps theory can be seen as a framework for producing knowledge?

http://ferryjan.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-3-reflection.html?showComment=1414607210675#c5738821991185360308

4.1

Hi Anna Maria!

I think that the seminar-setup Olle Bälter used was the best so far, it was really fun and instructive. I lso feel like this knowledge will be useful for the master thesis. However, i think that he talked a bit too much about how to construct surveys rather than when its
a good idea to use quantitative/qualitative methods. It was great to get some clarifications and guidelines for do's and dont's when it comes to surveys though!

http://dm2572stipic.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-4-quantitative-research-reflection.html?showComment=1414607711698#c2188264404336995133

4.2
I agree that this was one of the best themes so far, perhaps it has something to do with the seminar setup by Olle? I found it very fun and inspiring. I agree that the guidelines around constructing surveys was great. Some of these facts would have been really nice having before doing the bachelor thesis, i guess it is good to have this knowledge before the master thesis though! I agree that the most optimal thing would have been to read this course before the bachelor thesis. However, I think that its a good refreshment for the master thesis. The web vs paper survey discussion was really great, you tend to forget the pros of old technology to be honest.

http://dm2572johanhuu.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-4-reflection.html?showComment=1414608017232#c1554760454093366059

4.3

Hi,

I totally agree that theme 4 were really easy to grasp. It is an really interesting reflection around how Olle B‰lters seminar setup can be related to interactive feedback in surveys which he talked about. I guess that by including feedback in a learning/contributing process we can achieve better results both by making the process more fun while at the same time more instructive. Perhaps interactive feedback really has some future potential! 

http://dm2572-dlindstrom.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-4-post.html?showComment=1414608558987#c2991608145287872107

4.4

Hi Malin,

Haha, i dont know if that was something that Olle Really thought about, perhaps he just prefers qualitative answers over quantitative answers.... I believe that your second experience point was really interesting aswell. The questions you post in surveys have to be really clear and not contain negations and ambiguity.

http://kthkurs.blogspot.se/2014/10/reflection-after-theme-4.html?showComment=1414609504354#c3063109563135057071

4.5 

Hi,

Wow, great work with the table! Mind if i use it? Im just curious, but in what way do you think that you could have made a better survey with the knowledge you got from Olle?

keep up the good work! 

Link:http://ferryjan.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-4-reflection.html?showComment=1414610215279#c4250402149917437515 

5.1

Hi,

I agree that a collaborative setting result in many advantages. However, I think that you would have to consider the negative effect that participants might have on eachother; like not being completely honest about opinions, peer pressure. Furthermore a collaborative setting might be hard to analyze and not fit all test cases.

http://dm2572-dlindstrom.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-5-post.html?showComment=1414619305065#c8966045074558635197

5.2

Hello,

I did not attend Evas lecture but it seems like i did not miss anything really important. If you are interested in taking some courses in HCI i believe that there are some useful information in the link below:

https://www.kth.se/en/studies/master/kth/human-computer-interaction/course-overview-1.412663

I agree that the collaborative method is a great way for getting a deeper knowledge around the user testing. However, there are also advantages with a single user setting where there is no risk of users affecting each other. In order to know whether to use a single user setting or a collaborative setting you would have to know what kind of case we are talking about.

http://ferryjan.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-5-reflection.html

5.3

Hi Malin,

I liked Haibos lecture aswell, and i agree that it might be equally important (if not even more important) to define the problem as solving it. I think that there is a possibility that you often get stuck in your own way of doing things and therefore have a hard time adapting and "thinking outside the box". The most beautiful solutions are often the simplest ones, i guess that this is very important for our future work as engineers!

http://kthkurs.blogspot.se/2014/10/reflection-after-theme-5.html

5.4

Hi,

I guess that there is both pros and cons with a collaborative setting/think aloud. What it comes down really is what kind of user-testing is done. I would probably use a think-aloud method when evaluating a prototype in it's early stages while using a collaborative setting in the later stages where depth of answers might be more useful.

http://dm2572-johan-kasperi.blogspot.se/2014/10/post-theme-5.html

5.5

Hello,

Good reflections around Haibos lecture. What i found most central though was the part where we as engineers have to spend more time on defining the problem. Often it feels like we as engineers spend too little time defining the problem in comparison to the time we spend on problem-solving. Therefore we are often left with complicated and timeconsuming problems which could be solved in a better and more efficient way.

Keep up the good work!

http://dm2572johanhuu.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-5-reflection.html

6.1

Hi,

The doctor and police example helped me to understand what a case study really is. I guess as you're saying the main characteristic of a case study is to examine something within it's "natural frame". I think that many researchers might say that they are using a case study method when they're actually in some sense constructing the case. Perhaps the frames for calling it a case study is not so strict in practice as it is in theory. Good job!

http://dm2572-dlindstrom.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-6-post.html?showComment=1414667398746

6.2

Hi,

Great summary of the three main points. Even though the case study concept is a bit messy it seems like you learned and grasped the concepts from this theme, good job!

Haha interesting how many cases makes up "many" or "few" cases, did Leif mention why the line is drawn between 3 and 4 cases?

Keep up the good work! :)

http://kthkurs.blogspot.se/2014/10/reflection-after-theme-6.html?showComment=1414666426822

6.3

Hi!

Good reflections around using various methods in a case study, i guess that combining quantitative and qualitative methods is a main strength of a case study which leads to both broad and depth in information. In my seminar group we also talked about another strength of a case study which is the fact that you might stumble upon "serendipities" which can lead to some interesting hypotheses and theories.

http://dm2572johanhuu.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-6-reflection.html?showComment=1414666034194

6.4

Hi,

Good job on explaining a cast study! Besides the fact that you don't really run out of data i think that the breadth of information is what makes case studys in practice really interesting. You might find out that a answer to your questions in the case study context might be totally different from what you originally thought. Furthermore I liker that you defined four different categories in order to define what a case study is. Good job!

http://ferryjan.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-6-reflection.html?showComment=1414666776999

6.5

Hi Eric!

I totally agree that it sometimes is hard to say whether a researcher is using a case study or not. Often it feels like researchers are constructing the frames for the study just for the studys sake. In practice, perhaps the space between what a case study is and what a case study is not really strict but rather floating. However, this often makes it hard to know when someone is conducting a case study or a qualitative/quantitative study. Goob work!

http://dm2572-91roseri.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-6-post.html?showComment=1414667714465

Final reflection

Hello everyone and welcome to my final blogpost and reflection in this course. The course has included a lot of different topics and concepts such as methods, theory and philosophy which has resulted in new insights and knowledge that will think will be especially useful for the master thesis which i (hopefully) will write during the spring of 2016.

I would like to start of by talking a bit about the more philosophical part (theme 1-2) of this course which included reading from authors such as Kant, Plato, Horkheimer etc.

“Thus far it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to objects. On that presupposition, however, all our attempts to establish something about them a priori, by means of concepts through which our cognition would be expanded, have come to nothing. Let us, therefore, try to find out by experiment whether we shall not make better progress in the problems of metaphysics if we assume that objects must conform to our cognition.”

I find it really fascinating how philosophical concepts undermine much of the knowledge we gain at KTH today. What Kant is talking about is so fundamental are necessary preconditions for the kind of knowledge we gain in research and therefore interesting. Often we think that in order to gain knowledge we have to look out at the world. However, by examining how and under what cirqumstances we are looking at things, through our categories of understanding (causality, substance, unity etc) and forms of intuition (space and time) we can achieve better results. Furthermore, concepts such as nominalism has helped me think about how I have a tendency to group objects and generalise sometimes, being able to break away from social constructions is of course important. However, in research I think it’s important that there is a balance between konceptualism and empirism in order to not ignore structures of power.

I think that the philosophical part of this course was really interesting, rewarding and have resulted in many new perspectives which i probably would not have thought of otherwise.

The non-philosophical part of the course (theme 3-6) was mainly focused on theory, qualitative and quantitative methods and how to combine methods in order to conduct research such as case studies. After two weeks of abstract philosophy it was nice learn about topics and read papers that were easier to grasp. Learning what a theory is was something that changed my way of reading papers. It is sometimes still hard to realise what theories exist in papers that i read and I often overlook fundamental theories such as feminism, social capital etc. As a result it is important to remember the difference between a theory (a set of propositions/hypotheses that makes up a system of thoughts) and a hypotheses. Theories are not fixed but ever changing, something that makes future research very interesting to me.

When examining qualitative and quantitative methods I think that Olle Bälters seminar was really helpful. I learned a lot of useful advantages with qualitative and quantitative research. Advantages with qualitative research are that you get information about individuals thoughts and experiences, a whole picture answers which is useful when researching complex phenomenons. With quantitative methods you get more generic results and are useful when studying large amounts of people. Qualitative and quantitative methods both have advantages and disadvantages but often complement each other in a very good way and can be used together in order to tackle a research question from a more relevant angle. Often this is referred to as “mixed methodology” and I believe that using methods in this way often will result in more interesting and comprehensive results and allows different disciplinary boundries to be crossed. I think that the following quote is very interesting when talking about using qualitative or quantitative research methods and not using qualitative and quantitative research methods.

“…[any] kind of polarized debate has become less than productive. And, it obscures the fact that qualitative and quantitative data are intimately related to each other. All quantitative data is based on qualitative judgments; and all qualitative data can be described and manipulated numerically.”

Often a good approach to using mixed methodology is to first make use of a quantitative method, such as a survey in order to get breadth of information and get an idea of indicators within the research area. After the initial quantitative study a good idea is to examine interesting entry-points within the quantitative data with a qualitative method such as interviews in order to fully understand relationships and causality that lies behind the quantitative results. Furthermore, when trying to answer complex research questions, conducting a case study might be of relevance. A case study involves both qualitative and quantitative methods within it’s “natural frame”. Important to remember when considering a case study is that you probably will end up with more questions than answers. A case study is generates theories and hypotheses rather than confirming them. Often you might stumble upon serendipities which is in my opinion why this kind of research is very fascinating.

Often when conducting qualitative studies or case studies the word validity, whether the findings represent the current situation, are used. In order to establish the validity of research you can use a method called “triangulation” which means that you look upon a research question from multiple perspectives. There are different kinds of triangulation (data, theory, methodological etc) which all try to establish the validity in the findings. For instance, by letting people from different backgrounds (antropology, sociology, engineering, psychology etc) examine research data will result in a broader and deeper knowledge around the results and lead to higher validity. Furthermore, using different kinds of sources of information also increases the validity. This is often manifested in the use of different kind of quantitative and qualitative methods such as combinding surveys, focus groups, interviews, user-testing etc. A rule of thumb is to use data from at least two sources in order to achieve high validity.

I believe that what Haibo Li talked about at his lecture still is very important to consider, even though there are many different kinds of qualitative and quantitative research methods and forms of validation they all are dependant on what kind of research question is posed by the authors. A question can be posed from many different angles and can make the research easy or hard to conduct. Therefore I believe that we have to think one step ahead and think about our choice of question while at the same time reflecting around what methods and theories to use in order to get rich results.

Thanks!

Theme 6: Post reflections

This weeks theme, which also is the last theme in this course, was about qualitative research and case study research. Prior this theme i already gained knowledge around qualitative research and methods which was a part of last weeks theme "Design research". Therefore, the last seminar of this course held by Leif was mainly focused on case study research and therefore i primarily learned about case study.

When reading the assigned papers prior to this weeks theme i had a hard time grasping the difference between a case study and other research methods and how a case study is used in research. At first i thought that a case study is used in order to study a hypothesis or theories. However, it came to my understanding that a case study is rather the subject for the research, and that a case study generates theories and hypotheses rather than confirming them. This is in my opinion what makes studying cases interesting when conducting research, that you can encounter serendipities which results in new theories and hypotheses within the research area. Furthermore, I learned that when conducting a case study it is often so that both qualitative and quantitative methods are used to describe a phenomenon within it's "natural space", e.g. within a company, industry, country etc. An example by Leif was how doctors examine their patients, within the natural space of an individual, a doctor comes up with hypotheses concerning a persons condition depending on symptoms and examination, the case (the sick individual) is hypothesis generating and both qualitative (talking to the individual) and quantitative (measuring data such as blood pressure etc) are often used to provide hypotheses and theories about the persons condition, cause of sickness and how to provide a cure. I think that this theme was a really good last theme for this course since it sums up in which setting qualitative and quantitative methods combined are powerful in order to come up with new theories and hypotheses.

Theme 5: Design research (reflection)

Last weeks theme was different from the previous themes in the way that there were no seminar discussing the topic, instead we had two lectures. Unfortunately i could not attend the first lecture held by Eva-Lotta Sallnäs, however i did attend the lecture held by Haibo Li covering the procces of idea to product. The lecture had a very good structure and covered five main topics:

1. How to come up with an idea?
    - Re-state the problem

2. How to filter an idea?
    - Business mind

3. How to validate an idea?
    - Proof of concept

4. How to evaluate an idea?
    - Business mind

5. How to communicate an idea?
    - Elevator pitch

What i feel was the most central part in this lecture was about how to define a problem. According to Haibo many researchers today often locked in their own way of approaching a problem. The important part when solving a problem is not only to think in terms of providing a solution, but rather to first think really hard about what consitutes the problem and how to define it in the best way. This is something that I can relate to after studying for over three years at KTH. Often i have worked really hard solving different problems because of the fact that I had not defined the problem properly in the first place. Rather than spending 10% defining a problem and 90% solving the problem, perhaps it would be faster and easier if you spend 90% defining the problem and 10% solving the problem. During this course I have read alot of different research papers and often thought that the papers that got an advanced approach and solution often are the better ones. This might be the case, or not. Perhaps some researchers spend little time on defining what their problem really is and therefore end up with a advanced and complicated solution. In the future i will try to spend as much time as possible defining the problem when encountered by one instead on trying to solve it ASAP.

Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

Part 1

The paper I’ve read is called “Facebook and Online Privacy: Attitudes, Behaviors, and Unintended Consequences” and investigates Facebook users’ awareness of privacy issues and precieved benefits and risks of utilizing facebook.

Research found that Facebook is deeply integrated in users’ daily lives through specific routines and rituals. Users claimed to understand privacy issues, yet reported uploading large amounts of personal information. Risks to privacy invasion were ascribed more to others than to the self. However, users reporting privacy invasion were more likely to change privacy settings than those merely hearing about other’s privacy invations. The results suggest that this attitude may be based on a combination of high gratification and usage patterns and safer use of social networks would require changes in user attitude.[1]

Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

Based on existing litterature and theories the authors define four research questions:

·      RQ1: How important is Facebook to its users and which role does it play in their social life?

·      RQ2: To what extent is Facebook part of everyday rituals or has created its own rituals?

·      RQ3: Which role does Facebook play in creating and promoting gossip and rumors?

·      RQ4: Which negative effects, particularly with respect to privacy intrusions, does Facebook have?

These questions guided in-depth face-to-face interviews with eight participants (two male, fix female) which were selected from an earlier survey on the subject. The reviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed through a combination of qualitative content analysis.

The benefits of using interviews are that it results in how individuals think and feel about the chosen topic and why they hold certain opinions. It’s especially important if the research questions, as in this case, are more open and search for answers containing not only “if’s” but also “why’s”.

The limitations of interviews might be that it is very time consuming: finding interview objects, setting up, interviewing, transcribing, analyzing etc.

What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?

That analyzing the interviews seams to take a lot of time and require a lot of different analyzing methods if you want to do it properly. For instance some of the methods named in the paper are: Typological reduction analysis and hermenenutical/thetorical interpretation. 

Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?

An issue with this study seams to be that the interview participants were chosen largely based on how they had answered the previous surveys. This might result in a bias selection of participants where the selection is based in the authors hypotheses on the subject, which I consider somewhat problematic if you want to describe a generalised picture on the research area.

Part II

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

A case study as a research method concerns a specific instance or manifestation of the phenomenon to be studied. A case study may be based on one case (single case study), or on several cases (multiple case study). A case may involve one actor, such as a person or an orginasation or it may involve several actors (such as studying a conversation between people or a traffic accident)[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.
 The paper I’ve read is called “Social media competitive analysis and text mining: A case study in the pizza industry” and examines how social media competative analysis can be done through text mining to analyze unstructed text content on Facebook and Twitter for three large pizza chains. Results give recommendations in order to help companies develop their social media competative analysis strategy.

Strengths
 I think that a big strength of this paper is that they combine both quantitative and qualitative research methods which results in a more synergistic view of evidence, strengthens their grounding and gives different perspective on their research[3]. Furthermore, different tools for data analysis were used which had their own advantages and the three cases were treated as stand-alone cases which allowed the authors to look of patterns within each unique case before drawing any general conclusions.

Weaknesses
 I think that the data analysis in this research had it strengths it also has it’s weaknesses. Even though this research focuses on different types of data mining their result might would have been more interesting if they would have used some other methods in their research. Using only data mining is somewhat limiting when trying to understand how business should work towards social media. By looking beyond the comments and trying to understand how consumer behavior is changing by doing for example interviews with customers and businesses might would have resulted in deeper insights.

Referenser 

1.    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2011.01541.x/full

2.    http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/33607_Swanborn.pdf

3.    http://www.jstor.org.focus.lib.kth.se/stable/258557

 

Theme 4 reflections

During last week I have studied the benefits and limitations of qualitative and quantitative research methods, the only assigned litterature for last week was two papers which purpose was not to explore the benefits and limitations of different research methods. As a result I searched the web for litterature about qualitative and quantitative methods and their characteristics.

I believe that this weeks subject was a great preparation for the master thesis, it would also have been really nice to have some of this knowledge before doing the bachelor thesis which would have saved me some trouble in the process of defining a good method for solving our research question.

The structure of last weeks seminar was a bit different from the earlier seminars. The seminar group were devided into four teams where we competed in a game based on the word game ”boggle”. I really liked this weeks structure of the fact that it led to intense discussions and tips from Olle Bälter about the benefits and limitations about quantitative and qualitative research as well as paper vs web questionnaires.

If i had to choose one of the many things i learned at the seminar it is the importance of testing questionnaires and surveys. This will help eliminating errors which otherwise are very troublesome dealing with.

Theme 5: Design research

Theme 5: Design research

How can media technology be evaluated?

In the case of the paper ”Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration” a media technology is mainly evaluated through usability evaluation.
According to ISO recommendations, usability is defined “as the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which specified users can achieve specific goals in particular environments”. The experiments in the paper are therefore considering aspects like: effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. A simple indicator of a systems effectiveness is for example the success/fail ratio in completing a certain task. Efficiency is about how much effort is required by the users in order to accomplish a certain task. Satisfaction refers to the comfort and acceptability of the system in relation to the people that are affected by it. These aspects are important to evaluate in order to achieve a better design.

What role will prototypes play in research?
Learning to interact with a certain system should be easy for users so it can be used as effective as possible; therefore prototyping is essential in order to evaluate the system and as a result make iterations of the prototype in order to achieve a better simulation of the intended design.
In order to evaluate an hypothesis in research, especially when the project involves a device which does not exist yet like in the paper, an prototype is useful for testing and evaluating the research.

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

Developing a proof of concept prototype (POC) us useful for testing a design idea or assumption, it is helpful if the results of a POC is measurable so that they can affect the decision making process. Since it is a very early stage of the intended product it will provide answers helpful for when evaluating early advantages/disadvantages with the servive/device.

What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?

The basic idea of prototyping is to understand what requirements of the end service/product. However, the prototype is an early version of the end design and will therefore contain flaws. Testing of the prototype might therefore differ a lot from the end design, which might influence the end design in a negative way. For example considering the case of the paper we read, a test-cellphone were connected to a PCB board which not is a perfect representation of the possible end product, flaws with that prototype might affect participants doing usability tests and might therefore affect the end result.

How can design research be communicated/presented?

If research includes a prototype besides explanatory text about the prototype pictures, concepts, illustrations etc all add value for the reader. In order to evaluate the research, the development process might in some cases be valuable to explain as well. It really depends on if the prototype is an central part of the research how much focus the prototype should have in the paper.

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

A single user setting, there is only one participant at a time, whereas in a collaborative setting there is at least two participants preforming the user testing. The two user settings are different in the sense that the researchers in single user setting have to make the participant to think aloud in order to obtain results, whereas in a collaborative setting participants are more invited to talk about their experiences and thoughts with other participants. The results might vary in the sense where the collaborative setting might result in a possible risk of participants affecting each other, at the same time a collaborative setting might result in a deeper knowledge about the experiences and thoughts than a single user setting would. However, the collaborative setting might be harder to analyze and might not fit all test cases.

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

Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods might be a good choice if research includes both quantitative and qualitative aspects. In this case, methods from both areas will complement each other in a good way by using the strengths of each area. Qualitative methods have a tendency to answer the question “why” a phenomenon is as it is, when quantitative methods rather answer the question “if” a phenomenon is as it is. If a research question stated is of both questioning if and why a phenomenon occurs it might be a good idea to mix qualitative and quantitative methods.

How can using both subjective and objective methods give a better understanding of a phenomenon?
This question very much feels like the last one, while subjective methods (qualitative) are used when you want to acquire more personal and in depth information about an individuals thoughts and experiences, objective (quantitative) methods are often used when trying to verify a hypothesis. In that sense, objective methods often verifies if you are correct about your hypothesis while subjective methods examines why and provides more in depth knowledge about the hypothesis and the quantitative answers.

Research and Theory reflections (Theme 3)

Research and theory reflections

I think that this weeks theme “Research and theory” was a bit different from the previous weeks more philosophical themes. However, what theory is and what constitutes a theory is still a bit abstract for me.

Like last week I had a course collision, which made me unavailable for Mondays lecture. As a result, this week’s theme was harder to grasp before the seminar. However, this week’s texts and seminar was really helpful in order to get an idea about what theory is and how theories change.

From what I can understand, a theory is complex in the sense that it is a set of propositions, which makes up a system of thoughts that describes a phenomena/object. In that sense, a theory is built upon a set of proven hypotheses, which proposes causes and relationships. As a result, good theories help us formulate new hypotheses, which in return help us formulate new theories. Something that I found to be very interesting is the fact that a theory is something ever changing and not a fixed set of propositions. The hypotheses that make up a theory might be disproved or a new hypothesis might broaden the view of what a theory about something is. Furthermore, theories answer why a phenomenon occurs while a hypothesis tries to suggest what will occur, which I believe is an important distinction when trying to separate hypotheses and theory. Since theories can be really foundational they might be overlooked when reading a paper, for instance social capital, feminism and democracy are very basic theories which existed and was used in some of the papers in our seminar group, but are hard for the untrained mind to recognize and consider.

The knowledge of how theory differs from hypotheses, what constitutes a theory, how a theory is developed, how theory is ever changing and the importance of having proper theories when trying to answer a research question will be helpful when reading/writing papers in the future.