Theme 5: Design research

1. How can media technologies be evaluated?
   After reading Mr Li and his colleagues study I think that are a couple of different things that has to be considered when evaluating media technology. First of all the technology itself has to be evaluated of course. How good is the technology? Does it fulfill its purpose? What is its purpose? Also, since almost all media technology today is connected to the Internet, you have to think about what network your technology is aiming at. You also have to take into consideration the people using/supposed to use the technology. How do they experience the technology? How will it affect them and their lives? Are people ready for this technology or will it need regulations such as laws and user restrictions? In the article they use the ISO recommendations for usability (which is defined as effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction) in order to evaluate the usability of their media technology.
2. What role will prototypes play in research?
   A rather big role I think since today you can construct very realistic prototypes through either CAD-software or by the help of 3D-printers. I think that the better and more powerful tools we gain access to, when talking in terms of constructing prototypes, the more picky are people going to be. They want things that feels real and looks real, they don't just want it to be a picture inside their head. Like Haibo Li and his colleagues said in their conclusion (who were using a rather simple prototype in their study), "people participating in the study were interested in their product but the test prototype alone wasn't enough to make the users willing to buy it".
3. Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?
   I think that the most obvious reason would be to actually get people interested in investing money into an idea/concept. If you're having trouble finding people interested in an invention then you could break down the problem into smaller pieces, creating a proof of concept prototype, showing that your concept actually work so that they won't have to buy the pig in a poke. If you show people that your proof of concept prototype work then they might be willing to invest enough for you to create an actual prototype.
4. What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?
   I would say that the biggest limitation within a prototype is the risk of locking someone in to an idea of how something should look like. The more complex and real a prototype can look like the harder will it be to determine prototype from an actual product and I think that there's a risk of locking people in to a prototype. With more primitive sketches, thoughts and ideas you're more open to how the final product should look like, leaving more up to fantasy.One of the main characteristics of a prototype I would say is that it's main purpose is to test the concept/idea that you've come up with. To actually see if the concept looks like/works like you want it do in real life.
5. How can design research be communicated/presented?
   Mainly through sketches, mock-ups and diagrams. In some kind of illustrated way I think without too much text so that the viewer has to think for him-/herself. Today you also have the choice of rendering illustrations and movies on your computer of course which is also an high-fidelity alternative. But then again I would say that the low fidelity sketches and mock-ups has it pros as well, leaving more to imagination.

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

When in a collaborative setting you have multiple (at least two, kind of obvious) persons that can interact and share experiences with each other, which would be the biggest difference to a single user setting I suppose. The biggest difference in the results obtained I guess would be that in the case of collaborative settings the participants are able to influence each other, which could change the results quite severely. In single user settings you get more individualized results but then again if you're testing something that is supposed to be used in groups then these results could get quite misleading.

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

This spring when we wrote our exam assignment we combined a quantitative method with a qualitative method. The biggest benefit with this was that we could first analyze the empirical patterns from our quantitative method and then shape our qualitative study after the results from quantitative study in order to conduct a deeper analysis of the empirical patterns that we found. In our qualitative study we were able to further understand why the participants acted like they did in our quantitative study.

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

The answer to this question isn't that different to the previous question, they complement each other. You use an objective method to understand what is happening and then the subjective method to understand why it is happening.