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fredag 2 oktober 2015

Design Research, or the power of change(ing tiny details)

Réhman, S., Sun, J., Liu, L., & Li, H. (2008). Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration

Media technologies is in my opinion best evaluated through user testing. Interface design and usability can be clinically tested in and evaluated in lab, but that controlled environment will not tell you anything about how the end user will view your product. Users see your work differently than you do, since they have no preconceived ideas about what will work (if you do your study correctly and manage not to influence them). As a researcher it’s easy to get stuck on thinking that the idea you have developed is the best way to achieve your goal, and it can be hard to see your own bias. It is always hard to predict how and what a person gets from an interaction until it’s done. This makes prototypes invaluable in our field of research, since you need something to evaluate and iterate upon. Especially when you are dealing with physical products there is no way to know how it will work until you have a prototype that can be tested. In the Réhman et al paper they show how vital it is to have a prototype, since before they developed one all their theory was just that, theory. Prototyping is the best way to convert theory into practice, and to get confirmation that the theory works in your context.

This also applies to a proof of concept prototype. If the goal of your research is to develop a product that will be operated by users, in the end you have to make something that can actually be used. Before that point, no matter how many low fidelity prototypes you have, it is just speculation that your design will work as intended.

It might be tempting to work directly on your high fidelity prototype then, since that is in a way the end goal. However, that is mostly not the right way to go. This sort of research is dependent in iteration, and to iterate on a nearly finished product if often a waste of resources. Low fidelity prototypes allow for quicker changes with less effort. They are not a replacement for a proof of concept though, because as I said previously, you need to prove that your concept is valid and working as intended at some point.

A proof of concept is also in most cases the best way to communicate your results. User based research is hard to present in graphs if you don’t have a functional or nearly functional prototype

to test, since it’s by it’s very nature subjective and qualitative.

Finding design qualities in a tangible programming space - Fernaeus & Tholander

Differentiated Driving Range - Lundström

The empirical data in both of the concerning papers is test based. Both Fernaeus & Tholander and Lundström did their research by looking at existing technologies, and then developing their own and testing that in an environment similar to where it would be used in an actual case.

How then is this contributing to the pool of knowledge? I would argue that finding different and perhaps better ways of doing things is in itself a goal to be strived for, since otherwise we might still use the text based user interfaces of the computers early days. If iteration wasn’t considered to be a knowledge contribution the only things that would be counted would be to make new things. There would be no improvement on existing stuff, and that would be a shame.

There is a difference between designing for research and designing for production. When you design for production you need something that works. That is the end goal, and it is quite possible that when you find that something that achieves your goals you happily stop there. Designing for research on the other hand might mean iterating for the sake of iterating, to learn new things. You care about not just that it works, but how and why and why something else works better or worse. The end goal is not a well functioning design, although that might be a side goal, but to learn things about what you are studying.

All research is dependent on the context in which it has been made. While it might be easier to view a quantitative study on the mating habits of frogs as a more replicable study there must be space for the context to matter. Sure, design research is by it’s nature narrower in its applicable context than other types might be, but I think it’s a mistake to view it as therefore being always worth less.

måndag 28 september 2015

Comments on theme 2

Post Research and Theory, or what maketh the man.

This week felt different from the previous ones. It was to me less philosophical and a litte more practical, in that we what we read had to be applied straight away. It was still quite theoretical (pun intended), however.

I had a tough time grasping what theory is, but an easier time understanding what it is not. The text by Sutton & Staw was really helpful in telling me what it wasn’t, but the other text from MIS Quarterly was a little harder to grasp. What I chose to hang my understanding on was the statement “Theory is the question why”. So in that vein, theory would be trying to figure out why things happened. Say that you have observed a bird flying backwards. Facts about how it works, diagrams detailing how often it happens, none of these things is theory. Trying to figure out and explain why the bird does this, that would be theory.

At the seminar we discussed how it is possible to build a theory in the scientific sense when you can’t be sure that you will never be proven wrong. That, in a way, makes the question itself mute. You can never be sure to never be wrong, because you can only work with what you know and have at the time. It is Kantian, in a way, realizing that as he decided to work with and not through his senses, we have to work with the state of things as they are right now. You have to make assumptions, but make them sound and as good as you can. Build on those that came before, but be open to the idea of being proven wrong at some point, when someone makes a new discovery. You can only work within the paradigm, but don’t be afraid of it shifting.

During the lecture on monday we talked about theory in a historical context. In the western tradition seeing is the way to gather knowledge. That means that theory is taking a step back, to view things from the outside. Practice would then be the opposite, since it means actually doing things. Leif mentioned something I found quite interesting on that topic, and that was the different ways to view a subject. KTH, as a technical university, has a practical approach to things. We learn how to do math, and physics, and coding. Stockholm university, on the other hand, teach theory. Their students, even in subjects such as math, learn the theory behind things, and how to apply it. My friend from SU might not be able to solve a third degree equation as fast as I can, but she can do a proof of things I can’t explain. I think you need a combination of both to be a well rounded scientist, both theory and practice.

Although the lecture this week was very interesting (I found myself disagreeing about a lot of things, but in a very passionate way), I didn’t really see the connection between it and the seminar. The lecture talked about theory, sure, but on a different plane than what we saw in the literature and seminar. The most interesting thing to me was the discussion on what made a human. I’d like to formulate some of my thoughts about that, just briefly.

I believe, and stated during the lecture, that a human is made up of a human consciousness and a human body. A dead body is in a way still human, but it’s not a person because it lacks consciousness. A mind without a body, while very sci fi, like in an android might also not be considered fully human. I don’t really want to get more specific than that, because it feels like it leaves room for acceptable abnormalities. If you argue for something like language, how would you then view someone who is nonverbal (something that can occur in people on the autism spectrum, for example)? If lying is intrinsically human, is a bad liar then not a person? Someone mentioned being highly evolved, but that to me is meaningless. The mantis shrimp have 16 types of colour receptive cones is their eyes, compared to the human three. They can probably see colours we can’t even imagine. That seems highly evolved to me, but that doesn’t make them human.

fredag 25 september 2015

Quantitative research, or how many people is enough?

Analyzing quantitative methodology

The paper I’m looking at is Social Networking Sites: Their Users and Social

Implications — A Longitudinal Study by Petter Bae Brandtzæg. The paper looks at how people are affected by the use of so called SNS’s (Social Networking Sites). It tries to examine whether users of social media are more or less antisocial and lonely than people who do not use social media. The paper uses a longitudinal study, that is, a study that looks at how the data changes over time, in conjunction with a survey that gathered quantitative data from the respondents.

What stood out to me when I read the paper was the drastic lessening of responses they got over time. From about 2000 participants in the beginning of the study it had dropped to 708 or about 35% of the original respondents (the study was conducted three waves over the course of three years). While I was aware that a drop off in participation is expected, I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so steep. This, to me, stresses the importance to make sure to start with a large research material. I would also suspect that this makes it important to control that the dropout haven’t shifted the demographics significantly.

I fail to see any major flaws in the methodology at work here. However, I’m actually unsure if this means that are none, or is just an indication of my own lack of comprehension of what the author is doing. I understand the data collection process, but I’m having trouble following what they’re doing to analyze the data. Similar to a discussion we had during last themes seminar on not finding theory in a paper because of being overwhelmed by data, I’m wondering if I’m blinded by the sheer amount of numbers and diagrams here. The one possible flaw I can see is in the selection of the participants. The author have chosen data from Norway, a very computer heavy and internet savvy country. This might make the conclusions not applicable to a less computer dominated society.

Reflections on Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality

Do you move differently in someone else's body? That is the question the researchers are trying to find the answer to. They did this through motion recording of people drumming in a virtual reality setting, where the all white participants were given either a white or a black avatar.

What did I learn? That it is really difficult to read someone’s quantitative research methodology and understand what it is they did. Although I had no trouble grasping how the study was done or what the purpose was, I really didn’t understand how they had analyzed their results. I am not a statistician, which is good since the numbers and deviations just confused me. This is quite similar to the issues I had with the other paper, which I have detailed above.

This leads me to believe that one of the downsides of using quantitative methods is that it’s harder for someone not in the know to understand why the conclusions were drawn. Other limitations may include a difficulty in distinguishing anomalies from rare behaviour. This is not based on the essay, but instead just a speculation on my part. I would argue that when using quantitative methods, if you see something out of the ordinary it’s harder to know what to deal with. If you were to use a more qualitative approach you could always ask the subject, or something along those lines, but that is not possible in this scenario. Benefits would include things such as a, in a way, more neutral result. Quantitative methods leave less room for the researcher's bias to be made apparent, since you don’t really draw conclusions in a way that leaves much room for speculation. It is perhaps also in a way more giving for future research. If the data and analytical methods are clearly presented, it would be fairly simple for another research team to use your results as a accessible jumping off point.

So what about qualitative methods? Well, some things would be what I accused quantitative of not being. It is often easier for a layman or someone not as deep in the field to view and understand what you have done. It is able to present a fuller picture than just data points can, and leave more room for interpretation and adaptation. This is not necessarily a good thing, however, since the same argument could be made as a weakness.

måndag 21 september 2015

Comments on Theory of knowledge

Post Critical media studies, or how to reach a classless world in one (perhaps not quite so) easy step.

Nominalism. I was close in my understanding before the seminar, but I had a much clearer grasp afterwards. The seminar leader explained to us the difference between nominalism and realism through Plato’s allegory of the cave. In the allegory you are stuck in a cave and can only see the shadows from outside hit the back wall of the cave. A realist would argue that it is the object casting the shadow on the wall that is the true thing, and only a thinker can actually see the object. This understanding of the philosophical meaning of realism, as being different from the more everyday understanding of the word, helped me in seeing the difference between realism and nominalism.

The thing I found most interesting during the seminar this theme was a discussion about what can happened if you take a philosophy to the most extreme line of thinking. During the discussion on what nominalism was we talked about what can happen if you only always regard and never participate in the world. Nominalism and enlightenment are the same in the regard that they both advocate to take a step back, and try to see things as if you are not involved in what is going on around you.This is the reason that Adorno and Horkheimer were critical of it. If you take their argument to the extreme that would mean that it is only possible to act on what already is. There is no room for you to influence or change anything in your life, since you are just an observer. The world is the way it is. The rich are rich, minorities are oppressed, and there is no changing that. Also, along the same line of thinking, that could then mean that you as an observer have no moral or ideological imperative to stop atrocities from happening. In response to that I would argue, and did during the seminar, that similar risks can occur when taking realism to the extreme. If nominalism can be used as an argument for genocide by saying that this is the way the world is, and there is no changing that, then realism can in the same fashion be taken to dark side. It can interpreted to mean that anything that differs from the true thing you know exists outside the wall is wrong and of less worth.

So what similarities are there between enlightenment and mass media? Adorno and Horkheimer would perhaps argue that mass media just mirrors the world, and therefore has neither interest nor power to change things. Benjamin doesn't quite agree on that, he believes that some forms of art has revolutionary potential. His argument relates to the concept of aura. Aura, as I understood it after the seminar, is in itself exclusionary. Aura is created by uniqueness and that in turn is desired by the wealthy and powerful. Mass production of art would serve to destroy the aura of objects and serve to somewhat equalize the standing of the classes.
This is a very interesting thought to me, because in a way we have achieved the destruction of the aura in everyday life. All things are mass produced. The internet means that the spread and access to almost all forms of art are instantaneous. If I want to view the Mona Lisa I don’t have to travel to the Louvre, I can just google an image of it. It won’t perhaps, some might argue, be the same but I will still have seen it. If I want to see an obscure movie from India I can most likely do that on the same computer I’m using to type this. I guess you could say that Benjamin got his wish. In most art forms aura has been destroyed. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have brought on a true marxists paradise quite yet...

torsdag 17 september 2015

Research and Theory, or the almighty question of why

Analyzes of a research journal

I have chosen to work with the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. It’s a peer reviewed journal, published on behalf of the Association for Information Science and Technology. It was originally a journal about documentation and library science, but as computer took over as the leading medium for information the focus shifted towards information technology and communications. In 2014 it had an impact factor of 2.23

Critical examination of a research paper

The Effect of Social Network Sites on Adolescents’ Social and Academic Development: Current Theories and Controversies

by June Ahn

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.21540/epdf

This paper examines how, why, and to what effect teens and young adults use social media. The author examines and analyzes previous studies on the subject, looks at the frameworks in which those studies has been produced, and also discusses the links between use of social networks and issues such as self esteem, well being, privacy, and educational achievement.

In my examination of this paper, I’m going to focus on the author's conclusions, and implications for future research. The reason for this is that the focus of the paper itself is not to present new data, but rather to gather the current theories and research being done and put it in a larger context. It is in a way a meta study, but perhaps not in the strictest sense.

The conclusions being drawn are, in short: There are a lot of issues worrying parents and educators regarding children's use of social networks. However, while there is a lot of discussion going on there are very little empirical research being done. Most of the data being gathered is qualitative, and Ahn stresses the need for other types of data gathering. She also calls for studies to be more conscious and aware of the medium itself, and to be done with the structures of social networking in regard.

Since the focus of the paper is not the collection of data, but rather the compilation of a number of other studies, I would assume that the conclusion is a logical extension of the information gathered. Also, since the study is meant to assist future researchers to find areas of study for future research, I find that the conclusions drawn are appropriate and helpful for the target audience. This also applies to the significance of the research, in that it clearly points to the limitations of the previous research being done in the field.

I actually find this paper to be a very complete and well rounded meta-study, and have no opinions on what might have been done differently.

What is theory?

Briefly explain to a first year university student what theory is, and what theory is not.
Describe the major theory or theories that are used in your selected paper. Which theory type (see Table 2 in Gregor) can the theory or theories be characterized as?
Which are the benefits and limitations of using the selected theory or theories?

Theory is answering the question of why. When doing research it is easy to get lost amongst your data, and to believe that hypothesis and diagrams are theory. However, just listing your findings would be an example of bad theory, as it does not attempt to explain the things being observed. Theory would then be to, as I stated in the first sentence, try and explain why. Why is what you’re seeing happening, and why is that interesting?

If I’m to look at the paper I chose and analyze the type of theory it uses, I would say it is a combination of type 1, analysis, and type 2, explanation. The author mostly look at and presents the information as is. She does however make some attempt to take what she finds further and to try and explain a little both on what she believes the previous work has been lacking, and a little speculation on what she believes could be construed from the information.

I would say the the benefits of using that kind of theory is that it is quite difficult to go majorly wrong. Analysis requires no leaps of logic or assumptions to be made. When you venture further down the subtypes of theory you risk making incorrect assumptions, as they require you to answer the terrifying question of why it is happening. So while Ahn does attempt to talk a little about why and how the phenomenons she views are occurring, she doesn’t really risk being to wrong about the subject.