The bus pants! | Reflections - Theme 5

This week Theme was about Design research and to better understand it we had a Lecture and a Seminar.

Lecture with Haibo Li
The Lecture focused on main points you need to have in mind when designing a prototype.

One of the first key issues is how to define a problem and how to solve it. For the same problem you can find n different solutions and sometimes it takes time to find out which one is the best one. To be able to filter ideas one of the best and simplest ways is to divide them into good and bad. 

To classify the ideas you should look for theories that support your choice, mainly technical theories. In media technology it is useful to look for mathematic calculations that could give you real results on what could be better.

Another important think to consider is how good your idea is. Ask yourself: Is this breakthrough? Is this a winning business idea? Also think of a business plan, considering: the product purpose; the market; its attributes; the customers; the revenue; the competitors.
While trying a prototype first you need to proof the concept, then to check possible consumer’s opinions about it and finally try to start raising money to develop it further.

Seminar
Stefan presented a basic model that is usually used to define the stages of a design research. 

During the Seminar we were divided into groups and had to draw the model of the design paper of our choice. In the wiki of the course it is possible to see how many different variations you can have from the same basic model.

One of the things I like the most about the model is that it allows lots of variations and not necessarily every paper needs to include all the stages. For one topic you could have different papers to explain different aspects and phases of the topic. 

Design research seems like the nicest method to choose to write a paper because seems freer of frames and rules. 

Doubt on previous post
In one previous post I was in doubt about the difference between this technique and mixed research that follows:

Triangulation is when you look for the same kind of information but with different methods. The aim is to get a more accurate data, like a confirmation of the result.

Mix research is when you look at different things using different methods. Usually you start with one method and to try to explain one result you do another research with another method.


To close this week theme two nice video from The Big Bang Theory (season 4 episode 12) in which they design a prototype of an mobile app. This is just part of the video but the whole episode is worth watching... is the one where Sheldon explains his bus pants! 

Football lovers! | Theme 5: Design research

This week theme is about design research and the task is to write about my impressions and answer some questions about this paper Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration. I also have to write some reflections about a paper of my choice that I consider is using design research in a good way. My choice was (link) .

Impressions about the paper
The paper link (Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration.) main contribution is to show that vibration could be used as means of rendering live dynamic information for mobile phones. To get into this conclusion the authors designed a football experience with a vibrator in which the main events of the game would have a different vibration and users would be able to interpret them and know what is happening in the game.

The article is very clear and well written. It was very easy to understand everything, from the initial idea to the conclusion. I liked how they did some assumptions in the beginning framing a supposed background so they could argue why they would design the system the way they did. The only week point in my opinion was when testing the usability with the possible consumers. I believe they could easily have taken people that are interested in football, that would have a stronger opinion on the features of the product, than people with almost no interest in football at all. But they make it clear in the end of the paper that “a test prototype was not enough to convince users to buy” which means that they see this as a first step to prove that the vibration of the mobile could be used for this mean, but many other uses could come from it. 

To be really sincere I for instance quite don’t see that football lovers would prefer this vibration system instead of listening to the match on the radio in case they have no access to the live streaming. Although I found the idea quite interesting.

How can media technologies be evaluated?
The usability section in the paper describes that the evaluation they did followed an ISO recommendation, considering effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction of the user. In my opinion this is a very good way to evaluate media technologies.

What role will prototypes play in research?
The prototypes helps the researches further understand if their main ideas work and specially if there are adjustments that need to be done to improve the technology they are building up. With the user study the authors could get a better understanding of how the vibrations would have to be for example. 

Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?
In my opinion it is to be able to fix the main irregularities found on the experiment and try it with users to get more insights on how it could evolve.

What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?
I think the prototypes might not end up providing a false result if you don’t apply it in a real situation. In this study for example I got the idea of using a video instead of a live match, but I think that the result could have been different if they would have tried it with real football lovers that are over a huge emotion when seeing a import match of it beloved club.

Impressions about the paper of my choice
Still working on this part. I ended up not having time to write about it until the deadline… so I´ll post it as soon as possible.


The paper I chose was Mobile information and communication tools in the hospital. It is from the International Journal of Medical Informatics that has an Impact factor of 2.414. To come up with the system the authors first did a study that examined the application fields of mobile communication in health care environments and then developed the system based on the study. 

The methods used were first qualitative, with research questions to get an idea of the features of the application. Then to try the prototype they focused on application scenarios and user acceptance.  The method used was simulation study which they explain that is different  from an experiment. “It does not allow a complete evaluation of technical systems, but rather aims to obtain design proposals for a new technology from experts in the field and from future users.” 

Besides using the prototype the users were also asked to participate on group discussions and had to fill in a quantitative research about the system. I think this was a good way to evaluate the system, but in my opinion it could also overload the user with request of information and distort the results. Although the results were very rich and seemed to cover all the data need.

What I could learn about conducting design research from reading the paper is that choosing methods that complement each other and that will provide not only data about the prototype but how to improve it is very important. Also the more the test users are interested in trying the prototype the better, because they will provide a more accurate data. 

To close this blog post a nice video of a mkt campaign of Heineken, in which consumers have to choose either too see the football match or to go with their girlfriend/wife to a classic music concert. Take a look how they reacted!

So far so good... | Reflections - Theme 4

This week Theme was about Qualitative methods and to better understand it we had a Seminar and a Lecture.

Seminar
During the Seminar we were divided into groups to discuss our paper choice and also to build up some concepts in the wiki page of the course.

As I was late for my Seminar Group I had the chance to participate in two different groups and once again it was very interesting to see how people’s choices vary a lot while selecting papers. A finding to me was the diary method in which the respondents take notes in a natural setting which makes data more reliable as the person has no other reason than to really express his or her opinion. 

As Stefan (teacher) said it is very common to see papers using the triangulation technique, in which a mix of methods is used to validate the data from two or more different sources. Although this has leaded me to a question for next seminar: what is the difference between this technique and mixed research?

Lecture with Ylva Fernaeus
In the last post I wrote that hopefully in the seminar I would get the chance to understand the week’s article better. Guess what? The author was the one giving the Lecture about qualitative methods and also using her paper as kind of a case analysis. 

It was nice to see how she and her colleague constructed the idea and based the theory in semiotics to come up with the concept of "ActDresses". The main idea was to show that robots are not very different from toys and people like making it more personal. They decided to illustrate that the use of different clothes, words and sequence of signs can be used to interact and control the robots behavior.  The paper was only theoretical so in fact they only illustrated the idea with supposed scenarios instead of really building up prototypes.  

A nice example Ylva gave of how this theory could work is that by changing the cover of your mobile you could get a different matching theme in the screen. 
In the second part of the Lecture she discussed some questions with us about the methods used in the paper. Some of my notes:

1. What was qualitative about the method? In a qualitative method you try to get to the essence of your theme, and that was what they did. In a quantitative method you try to generate acknowledgment for measurement.

2. What is the empirical data in the paper? The illustrated scenarios could be empirical data. They were something created to try to explain that the theory was possible. In a design research design practice can be used as empirical data and sketches can be used as reflective practice.

3. How would statistics help making the paper better? It could have made the motivation more credible.

4. Is it a problem that there was no user study? It might be odd to think that a user study was not missing in the paper, but in fact it was not a problem. Because then the paper would not be made in a more theoretical base, and this would have changed the focus they wanted to prove. 

5. Can this be considered objective knowledge? Yes, because it was grounded in theory in a sense that is not purely subjective.



To close this week theme another video from The Big Bang Theory (3x10) in which Sheldon has a very funny research Diary over an experiment he is doing in teaching physics to Penny. Enjoy! 

Hit the bell if you know! | Theme 4: Qualitative methods

This week theme is about qualitative methods and the task is to write about my impressions on this text. Also i had to choose a paper that I consider is using qualitative methods in a good way to reflect on it. My choice was "Measuring Organizational Cultures: A Qualitative and Quantitative Study across Twenty Cases"
from Hofstede, Geert".

Impressions about the text
The title of the text is very intriguing (Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses) but the introduction was a huge question mark to me.  Maybe I had this feeling because of my background in social communication which is not even close to HCI and technology in this sense. 

I must confess that until the case section I was not really sure what the article was about. The concepts for a person that is out of the area are very hard to follow. I think that there is a “rule” for writing that everybody should be able to understand it.  Not quite sure if I agree with it, because for some people outside the field this is just something they couldn’t understand in an easy way by the first time anyway. So what is the point in making it too simple? But still. 

The cases exemplified the idea in a very nice way, but even so I still quite don’t understand the “experiment”. Maybe it will be easier after the discussions in the Seminar. I get the point of making some devices look like humans, like the Disney characters in which for example a lion would have eyebrows. But I really didn’t get the point of for example the comic signs for a vacuum robot (?).

Moreover I liked the pictures to illustrate the idea and the structure is very coherent. I also like the referencing system of having a number while quoting, makes the read flow.

Impressions about the paper of my choice
I think this article makes use of a mixed research method, because it uses a quantitative questionnaire plus in-depth interviews. The article is from 1990, had 560 citations from Web of Science (which is an average of 25 per year) and it is from the journal Administrative Science Quarterly which has an impact factor of 4.212.

The theme is not related to technology itself but more on how different cultural aspects can have an impact in organizations. In my opinion when developing a product, like an internal social network to a company, one should be able to analyze the different impacts in each group of users, trying to make it as much user friendly as possible. Also how to be able to offer a product that is feasible to the organizational culture and how to make the top management support your idea that most of the times will be breaking an old structure, making people adapt to a new system/tool.

The paper uses in-depth interviews with employees of IBM company that later lead to a quantitative questionnaire based on the main thoughts suggested in the qualitative method. I like the composition of the methods because usually a qualitative method gives you support to draw quantitative questions. Although I am not sure that having only IBM  and other two country companies as respondents could have had an impact on the results, representing a limitation in the model.

In my opinion a qualitative method is good to underline some questions that can be further explored. When having a mixed research method the results of a qualitative can later be used to explain some of the quantitative results as well, reinforcing the hypothesis. In my opinion the qualitative method is also better to be used when you have a specific and not to broad target group.


To close this post one video from a sequence of that the mobile Sony Xperia has made showing different users groups in a focus group interacting with the product. For your laughs! 

The Marshmallow Experiment | Reflections - Theme 3

To better understand this week theme about quantitative methods we had a Lecture and a Lab exercise.

Lecture: Choosing Quantitative Methods with Martha Cleveland

The Lecture was very intense regarding the theme, full of examples that made me think once again on how careful we need to be when designing a research, especially considering unique or mixed methods and sampling.

Martha divided us in small groups for discussions about advantages and disadvantages of mixed methods. As main positive aspects I remember that the more data you have the chances to get a better and more accurate result. Also that by setting up an experiment that can be replicable increases the quality of the result once you can get either the same result, validating previous ones or new results, showing opportunities to be further analyzed. As a negative aspect I remember that framing the main research question and the hypothesis might be hard considering different methods, and also that the results might be hard to be connected one to each other.

Moreover she said that the mixed research methods are being more and more used by researchers and indicated a journal that is based only with this method.

Sampling was also discussed in the Lecture, especially how hard it is to get a random sample (I´ll try to look for a good definition and post on the blog later). It was also very interesting to listen to her telling about how gender, age and intercultural aspects should be taken in consideration while sampling.

LAB exercise, quantitative methods

Before we went to the LAB a Lecture about how to perform an analysis of a research was given, so we would understand its complexity and also how careful you need to be to choose the right filters. We also were introduced to the SPSS Statistics system that to me looked a lot like Excel. I have never seen this system before and all the previous researches I have performed we analyzed the data in Excel.

The second part of the Lab we went to the computers rooms to use the program. Although I must confess that it was a little frustrating because the system did not work properly due to some errors.  Still we were able to do one exercise in which we filtered a multiple answer question. It was very nice to see how easily a report of the desired data could be visualized in tables and exported.

To close this week theme I thought of a very funny video that shows an experiment with kids called the marshmallow experiment. Could there be any different outcome placing a kid in front of a marshmallow?! Seems like the reactions vary a lot! Enjoy!

On&Off line | Theme 3: Quantitative methods

This week’s theme is “Quantitative methods” and on this post I will reflect on the key points and on what I learned by reading two articles.  

The first paper “Mixed research and online learning: Strategies for improvement” is mainly about the differences between performing a quantitative and a qualitative research and how the choice of methods can affect the results. It also discuss the concept of “mixed research” in which both methods are combined to provide a better understanding of research problems than if you decide to use only one method. By having a mixed approach the data is enriched and this expands the interpretation of the findings.

The research questions are also pointed out as fundamental in the process because they help narrow the focus of a study (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2007); they provide a framework, set boundaries, and give rise to the type of data that will be collected (Onwuegbuzie & Leech, 2006). 

When choosing the method the author emphasizes that good quantitative questions should identify the population and its dependent variables. Also the sample definition should be seen as a key step in any study because it helps establish the quality of inferences a researcher makes from the findings of a study (Collins, Onwuegbuzie, & Jiao, 2006). This is something I always pay attention in papers and articles: the way they evaluate the possibility of a different result by the specific aspects of different populations. Especially considering media papers where characteristics may vary a lot from country to country.

Moreover it gives the impression that research is a lot more complex than what we think and that we need to learn, to be trained how to perform high quality researches.

The second paper “Emotional presence, learning and the online learning environment” draws the hypothesis that emotion plays a role in online learning environments. To me the main concepts presented were the sense of community/group, different emotions and online/offline environments. The background information was very rich but sometimes the references were not that clear in the sense that you would have to read the article reference to get the point they were trying to make.

The paper tries to be very descriptive but still I could not really understand for example the methodology part. To me it seems like sometimes describing a research method is so difficult that it would be easier just to get either some illustrations explaining it or the research itself in the appendix.

The findings were interesting because they were able to support their main hypothesis but they ended up raising so many more questions to be further investigated that I actually was frustrated.

To close this post I thought of another video (episode 2 season 4) from The Big Bang Theory, connected to the emotions in an online environment. Sheldon decides to live as a robot, interacting with people in a very online way.

Bazinga! | Reflections - Theme 2

This week’s seminar was to discuss our understanding of theory and from the previous post it is possible to see that I was very confused in defining what a theory is or is not. 

As we started the small group discussions I realized that a theory doesn't necessary need to come up with a brilliant new idea. And this was really something new to me. Instead a theory might be as simple as making a point by analyzing previous studies and connecting some dots so you prove your idea to be reasonable enough. 

There are lots of different ways to define a theory and I liked when Stefan Hrastinski (Teacher) said that the concept of theory is like the concept of knowledge we discussed last week: very broad and with different definitions that somehow complement each other. So in my opinion it can be interpreted in the way that suits you the most. 

Although I agree with the article What theory is not that sometimes a paper we read doesn't show that the author really put some effort in constructing a strong theory and making a point to prove it.  But again this might be just a perspective in judging a paper and questioning it in a philosophical way, what would be a strong or a weak theory? What would be relevant and irrelevant? The answers are totally subjective and would depend on the interest of the reader. 

To me the best concepts of theory posted on the course wiki were:


Theory is an abstract entity that aims to describe, explain, and enhance understanding of the world and, in some cases, to provide predictions of what will happen in the future and to give a basis for intervention and action. Theory is something we construct, it does not exist by itself.

Theory is about the connections between phenomena, and explaining WHY and HOW acts, events, structure, and thoughts occur. Theory attempt to explain the causal logic between cause and event.


Something I thought of in the seminar was also that while looking for a theory paper, instead of typing a concept I should have typed the word “theory” in a high impact factor journal in the field of communication, for example. I am pretty much sure I would have found some interesting results, similar to the ones other students found.

To close theme 2 a funny video from the The Big Bang Theory in which Sheldon tries to test his theory of how to make new friends (Episode 13, 2nd season). He comes up with an idea, draws a research to test his hypothesis. Then based on the results and on a book (reference on previous researches) he draw an algorithm, tries it and check if his idea can be supported. In the end he proves his theory to be plausible. 
Bazinga! 

e=mc² | Theme 2: Theory

     

This week’s theme is “Theory” and in this post I will explain how I understood it from the suggested article readings and also a brief analysis considering the strength of the use theories models in a research paper of my choice. 

In my opinion the easiest way to understand “theory” was thinking of remarkable ones from previous studies. In my case I ended up relating it to some mass communication theories that I learned while doing my bachelor’s in social communication. 

Although I must confess that the first one that pop up in my mind was Einstein theory of relativity. I am far away from understanding Einstein but for some reason it popped up. 




From the article What is Not Theory I could came up with this brief explanation:

A theory need to be based in true statements about a specific theme. It is a blend of findings and logical reasoning to justify hypotheses but not a discussion of current results, findings. References, data, variables, diagrams and hypothesis are used to prove that a theory is true. Although isolated they cannot be presented as a theory. Good theory is about the connections.

After reading the article I was surprised by how hard it is to actually produce a consistent and coherent theory. In fact, as said in the article, what we usually read in the papers and journals are not really theories, they seem to be more of results of researches, that don’t really present a new finding. I realized that when following the task of the week to look for a paper that would present a good theory. Maybe in the scientific area this might be easier, or maybe I was too attached to the article concept. 

I was also very confused if there are different types of papers, with different objectives. Because to me the more logical for a paper that  presents a theory would be to first present a proposition, like something the author of the paper believe to be true instead of questions or hypothesis which was the most common patter I saw. Then with references, data, variables, diagrams and hypothesis prove if the theory really works.  

I must confess that I tried for more than two hours to look for a research paper that would present the characteristics implied as an excellent theory. I had to really try to look for a new concept that could have been proven to be true somehow. I ended up finding the concept of digital natives, and a very interesting paper about it, but unfortunately I did not find the journal’s impact factor what made me doubt its reliability. 

Then my choice was the paper Ad Lib: When customers create the ad published in 2008 by the journal California Management Review (impact factor of 2.014) and has been cited 24 times.

From what I could identify from the article The nature of Theory  the paper is based on the IV model: explanation and prediction. The reason is because it presents what is the concept of Ad Lib, how, when, where and also why it happens. The arguments for answering the questions they attempt to solve are based on case studies that is a characteristic of causal explanations, also contained in the IV model. Moreover the authors present some advices deal with this situation that has appeared and that by their arguments will increase over the years. Stating what it will be is also a IV model attribute. 

One weak point though is that the research method they have chosen to use (case analysis) might not be statistically taken in consideration and the theory for explaining and predicting uses statistical and qualitative data to test the propositions. In my opinion looking to the interrelationships among the Theory types (figure 1) the analysis one is a base to any other. The explanation and prediction is a sum of both if seen as separated. In my opinion the authors used the most complete model.


Some concepts to keep in mind: 
1 References are not theory because no logic is presented to explain the reasons that led to the author’s predictions.

2 Empirical evidence plays an important role in confirming, revising or discrediting existing theory and guiding the development of new theory. Provide useful support for a theory.
   
   Data describe which empirical patterns were observed. Theory explains why empirical patterns were observed or expected to be observed.

3 Lists of variables must be explained by the theory showing why they are connected.

4 Diagrams can be a useful support in building theory, making it more understandable.

5 Hypotheses serve as fundamental bridges between data and theory. Hypotheses are what is expected to occur not why.


Later it will be time to check if all the assumptions made here were in the right direction.

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." 

Albert Einstein

So far so good... | Reflections - Theme 1

"... if you take the red pill you stay in wonderland and I´ll show you how deep the rabbit hole goes..." 

Morpheus - Matrix

Seminar – Journal, article, impact factor
The first moment of the course this week was a Seminar to discuss the journal and the article we have previous chosen and discuss it in small groups. In the same Seminar we were also asked to choose the journal and the article we thought were the most interesting ones. 
I liked the structure of the seminar because it made me realize that I understand the concept of impact factor (if) and that it takes time to find and interesting and high quality article. Also that the field of Media Management is based on constant changes and take some time for articles to get a high (if), which means that it might be difficult sometimes to evaluate an article based only on its (if).

Lecture – Theory of Knowledge
The second moment of the course was a Lecture about Theory of Knowledge, based mainly on the book “The Problems of Philosophy” from Bertrand Russell. During the lecture some concepts from the book started making sense. I believe that my main learning was of how we, as master students about to write a thesis, need to be conscious of how our work after published can or not end up influencing others. Moreover the lecture also made me think of the roles a student can choose as a learner and/or as a knowledge producer.

Seminar – Theory of Knowledge
The third moment of the course was a seminar about Theory of Knowledge in which we were divided in small groups to discuss the concepts of Russell’s book written in the previous blog post. 

It was very good to better understand the concepts and to check if the interpretation I did was the same as the others. Having the wrap up discussion with the whole class, after discussing it in small groups, was very nice as well because it complemented the concepts.

An interesting discussion emerged while discussing proposition and statement of fact:  the concept and the different types of verbal expressions. The discussion of the perception of the world being flat or not was also interesting. It clarified to me that propositions and statement of fact are synonyms and that both means that any proposition can be taken into consideration and experimented, and by its results be taken as truth.


To close the posts from Theme 1 a worth watching video of Matrix in which Morpheus questions Neo about his feelings, his beliefs, his perception of the world, knowledge and truth. And just like Neo, choosing to follow Alice steps seems the most reasonable thing to do, don’t you think?

The white rabbit | Theme 1: Research publications/Theory of science

1st step: Follow the white rabbit to find Wonderland...

In the first Lecture of the course the proper way in finding high quality journals and articles was approached, specially referring to the use of the Web of Knowledge and Google Academic tool.

The “impact factor” (IF) of a publication – a way to measure the quality of a publication by the average number of citations it has – was also explained and suggested to be evaluated in the searches performed on a research.

The first task of the theme 1 was to select both a research journal and a research paper for media technology with impact factor 1.0 or above. 

The journal I chose was the “Social Science Computer Review”, which has an IF of 1.075 (link). The journal is interdisciplinary and covers mainly research applications of computing, as well as the impacts of information technology in society. 

The article I selected was “The Impacts of Emoticons on Message Interpretation in Computer-Mediated Communication” and it was cited 49 times in the Web of Knowledge, which characterizes it as high quality. Considering the content the main question is to determine the effects of three common emoticons on message interpretations and 7 hypothesis were draw in the experiment. The main concepts are well structured as well as the relationship between them. The background information is logical, relevant and it is possible to see the progression of ideas. The only problem was that the work was published in 2001, and focusing on the use of emails, which nowadays in my opinion are not a media in which emoticons are mostly used. It would be interesting to check if the results would be the same in different channels as well. The research method used was an experiment to assess affective and attitude interpretations of emoticons. The data presentation was comprehensive and the results discussion very rich. While rreading the description of the research it occurred to me some of the same implications the author describes, like the impact of not having someone from the personal network sending the message and also the familiarity of the responder with the use of emoticons. Besides the discussion aspects, I think the author should also have written a conclusion of the study. 

The second task of the theme 1 was to read the book “The Problems of Philosophy” from Bertrand Russell and reflect on some concepts that the author presents.

In my opinion the book reading was intense not only because it questions the reader about so many different aspects of the same thing but also makes you confront your own beliefs when exposing strong and eloquent arguments.
During some passages the book reminded me a lot of two movies, The Truman Show and Matrix, especially considering the existence of matter “There is no logical impossibility in the supposition that the whole of life is a dream, in which we ourselves create all the objects that come before us.” 

Concepts to keep in mind: 
1. sense-data: the things that are immediately known in sensation such things as colours, sounds, smells, hardness, roughnesses and so on. Related to physical objects.

Why is this notion is important? Lead us to adopt the natural view, that there really are objects other than ourselves and our sense-data which have an existence not dependent on perceiving them.

sensation: the experience of being immediately aware of this things. 

2. proposition: it is a statement for consideration, based in logic. 
   - a priori: two and two are four; 
   - a priori (ethics) may also be elicited by experience: happiness is more desirable than misery; 
   - empirical generalizations: all men are mortal; Socrates is a man;  therefore Socrates is mortal.
   statement of fact: based in experiences; can be verified by experiments.

Propositions and statement of facts are based on the truth. Other verbal kinds of expression are based in each person's perception of reality and it can be true or false.

3. definite description: unique, nothing else has. “The so-and-so”, the nature of our knowledge concerning objects in cases where we know that there is an object answering  to a definite description though we are not acquainted with any such object. 

4. theory of knowledge (epistemology):
How can we know what is true and what is false? There can be no doubt that some of our beliefs are erroneous. 
One cannot be totally skeptical, otherwise no logical argument can be advanced. Example of religion, you need to have a start point of beliefs.