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
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.
Fernanda, I found your sentence - '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' very interesting, because I also think so. Don't you think that first of all (before to invent some prototype) the researchers should make a survey or smth to understand that their research will be popular?
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