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.