Post seminar 6

This week we talked about case studies, and before the seminar I did not really understand the difference between a case study and other studies. We were told that typical for case studies is that they use different methods simultaniously. But as we’ve read several papers and articles during these weeks, we’ve met different studies where they used several methods, whitout being defined as case studies.

So, during the seminar, we spent some time discussing what a case study is:

A case study is an investigation about a subject that is real. It studies reality. This can be confusing, since this reality is relative. A good example Leif talked about was when investigating people with ADHD. This diagnosis did not exist a few years ago, and an investigation about ADHD would not be a case study then. Today, on the other hand, the diagnosis exist and therefor it is defined as “reality”. Today you can perform case studies about ADHD.

The subjects of case studies are real, and they exist. But it does not have to be present, it could have happened a hundred years ago. A case study combine and work with different methods simultaniously. It is important to be specific and know what to investigate and have a specified, limited area to research. When doing case studies you have a big amount of data to research, which can be a benefit but also a difficulty in the same time.  

Post seminar 5

This week did not consist of a seminar-part, so this post reflection was going to be based on 2 lectures. Unfortunately, one of them where moved to next week, so we had one lecture this week. It was hold by Eva-Lotta Sallnäs Pysander.

I hoped she would talk about the design research more in general, because I thought it was an interesting part of the course. But instead she talked very much about previous studies of her own. In her researches she used haptics and collaborative research.

Eva-Lotta was very positive about this collaborative method. As I wrote in the pre-reflection, collaborative research is when doing research on a group (more than 2) and this atmosphere let the participants join in a more relaxed way. But I think this can be both positive and negative, since the participants can affect each other in both positive and negative ways. Collaborative research is good when the participants bring out the best of each other and encourage each other to talk and share opinions. In the same way, collaborative research can work the opposite, by having participant that prevent this flow of information.

As I said in the beginning, I was hoping for more general information during this lecture, because I did not really learn very much (I have to admit). But I’ll keep some tips she mentioned.  

Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

I chose the article ‘“Maybe you don’t want to face it’’ – College students’ perspectives

on cyberbullying’ from the journal “Computers in human behaviour”. This paper wants to study the cyberbullying phenomenon among university students, due to that cyberbullying is seen as not as usual in universities than ar college, and also because the lacking of qualitative studies about this subject. The researchers want to assess the undergraduate students perceptions of cyberbullying and also, they want to determine acceptable interventions to reduce the cyberbullying.

To do this, they recruit 1st and 2nd graders (N=54) of a southern university. These students are divided into small groups, where the researchers can accomplish a qualitative method via focus groups. The research is done by two researchers, which they utilize in the processing part of the study. They analyze the result separately, before they compare and discuss their perceptions. Also, after analyzing their result, they discuss it with a new group of students as a follow up.

The benefits with using focus groups when discussing this subject, is that they don’t have a goal predetermined and therefore the discussions are good because you can adapt the procedure as the discussion developes. Unlike surveys with their predefined questions, in e.g. discussions, you as a researcher can observe the discussion and find important subjects and/or points you have not thought about before. It turned out that the subject “cyberbullying” and its’ definition could differ between the students, and therefore it was an advantage to be able to discuss the subject to make everything clear. As shown in the study, some of the participants found out that they’ve been bullied earlier, but did not know it until after this discussion. If the researchers in this case would have chosen a quatitative methods, like a survey, the result could have been missleading as the students could have perceived the questions differently.

The method used in this paper is a method I have read about before. Therefore, I did not find anything that was new for me in particular. But, I still find it useful to read about different surveys, because you can study how other researchers use the methods in different ways in studies with different aims. In this study, as they were looking for a intervention that could reduce the cyberbullying, I found it smart to use a follow-up group of students that could evaluate their result and give inputs and new reflections.

Since I think the focus groups were a good method to use to this kind of research, it is difficult to state any problems with it. But it may be that this kind of method gives a local result, in means that it is hard to generalize the outcome. The occurrence of cyberbullying may also differ between different universities, which leads to the result being hard to reference to everywhere. To develop the research, they could add a quantitative study, which would make it possible for them to find out the situation in different areas. Further, the qualitative result could then explain why the case as it is in a certain university.

Part 2

In case studies you analyze “real-life” phenomenas, events or persons wherefrom you derive conclusions. The methods used in case study research are quantitative or/and qualitative and are supported with empirical and theoretical studies. The case studies help you to see how real life complexities influence decisions and can involve multiple levels of analysis.

I chose the paper “Social media competitive analysis and text mining: A case study in the pizza industry”. As many companies are not familiar with social media competitive intelligence and analysis and lack of understanding of the process of mining social media data, the authors perform a case study to illustrate how social media data can be transformed into knowledge through text and mining.

The study focuses on the media sites of the three largest pizza chains (in America); Pizza Hut, Domino’s pizza and Papa John’s. And the defined research questions are:

• what patterns can be found from their Facebook sites respectively?
• what patterns can be found from their Twitter sites respectively?
• what are the main differences in terms of their Facebook and Twitter patterns?

The crafting instruments of the study: text mining to analyze text content on their social medias, facebook and twitter.

I think it was hard to find weaknesses since what I in earlier seminars complained about, the lack of the combination of qualitative and quantitative method, is found here. In this paper they use a combination of both methods, and I think they complement each other very well. But, to develop the research, you could have dug a little deeper, with following questions/interviews with the chains. By doing this, you can reach a deeper understanding of ‘why’ the social media sites used in certain ways.

Theme 5: Design research

1. How can media technologies be evaluated?

I think media technology is more than e.g. a functioning webpage or application. After finishing your production,even if it works in a technological aspect, you have to execute further evaluations before you can call it finished. This evaluation, I think, can differ between different services depending on its use, function and role. In this paper, they measure satisfaction, efficiency and effectiveness, i.e. they evaluate the usability of the product. Satisfaction refers to the comfort and acceptability of the system to its users and other people affected by its use. The satisfaction were measured by questionaires given to the participants. Efficiency is about how much effort is required in order to accomplish a task. In the paper, they used reaction time of a user to measure efficiency. Effectiveness is about wether or not a task could be accomplished with the specified system, and they measured this by letting users click on corresponding areas of a football field. The clicking time and position was then used to mesaure this factor. Since media technology often means non-physical objects and software, I think the usability is very important to evaluate. As I mentioned before, even if a webpage is technically functioning, the lack of good usability design can make it almost worthless.

2. What role will prototypes play in research?

I think prototypes are very important in research because they can illustrate the actual usage of your work, meaning that you can discover problems you have not thought about and problems you did not find in theory. For example, in this paper they were going to send match-information via vibrations to your skin, and not until using a prototype, they could find the meaning of attributes as e.g. comfort. The product were uncomfortable when using for a long time.

Most important, is that by discovering these kind of problems on a prototype-level, means that there is still time for you to make these changes och develop your product further, before concretizing it into a real product.

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

By doing a proof of concept prototype, you want to find out the feasibility of your product and its potential of being used. This is important, beacuse even if the product is technically functioning, and also, it contains good usability, it may be lacking feasibility. By doing a proof of concept prototype, you may find weaknesses with your product or maybe find ways of how to adjust and develop it to gain even more feasibility.

4. What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?

A prototype helps the user to get a better understanding of the product than what he/she gains of just reading about it. In this way, the user can interact with the functionalities of the product in the same time as it is a chance for the developer to study this interaction for further  development and change of functions.  

As mentioned in the paper, a prototype presents the product to the users and gather their interest, but it is not enough to convince the users to buy it. The prototype is just a prototype, and it will not fully show how the definitive product will look like. Maybe, this can mislead the users since the prototype does not look like or can preform all the necessary uses and functionalities it is supposed to do when finished.  

5. How can design research be communicated/presented?

I think working with prototypes is a good way of presenting a product, because it gives a good overlook of what will be. And also, there can be different levels of prototypes, which start from as a rough overview of the product, and ends in a more detailed one.  In this way, I think the users will give relevant feedback for the phase of the development.

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

The difference between single user setting and collaborative user setting is the number of respondents the result is based on. As the name says, a single user setting bases the result on one person, when a collaborative setting is based on a group of people, i.e. two or more. Advantages when having a collaborative setting is that a group of people can perceive the questions and assignments in various ways, which can lead to a wider understanding and discussion. Also, with this setting you can study the interaction between the users. But in the same time, the fact that participants affect each other also means that it could happen in a negatively way.

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

They complement each others because they answer questions in different ways. Quantitative methods give a statistical result, while a qualitative result helps you understand the quatitative outcome and answer the question of why.  

Also, they can complement each other by e.g. helping the researcher to form the quantitative studie with the outcome of the qualitative.

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

The outcome of a objective data is concrete, while the outcome of subjective data is more abstract or maybe more depending on the participant. Just like the qualitative and quantitative methods complement eachother, I think subjective and objective methods do the same, by answering the questions differently or answering different parts of a question. By combining these two, you get a deeper understanding.

Post seminar 4

This week we read texts about quantitative studies and the advantages and disadvantages that come along. As I sad before, I must admit that I did not learned very much about quantitative methods by reading them, since much of the content is already known and I have encountered it in previous courses. But in the same time, I think that it is useful to read about different surveys to see how methods are implemented in different ways.

During this seminar we were divided into groups to discuss the differences by using quantitative versus qualitative methods, focusing mainly on quantitative. Also, the seminar was formed as a competition between the different groups, which I think is a perfect way of learning and also getting everyone active. In this way all the groups were engaged in the discussions and had to listen to each others. Smart!

 After this theme I think the use of quantitative methods is more complicated than I thought. I do not mean that it is more difficult, but I think that there are several ways of designing and     performing your survey to take into account. This knowledge can then maximize the outcome of your quantitative method.