Theme 5: Design Research

For this week has the focus shifted from different general wide topics towards a more specific topic - human computer interaction (HCI) and design research. The papers included in this theme have many similarities, mainly because they operates in the same field and both produces and evaluates different prototypes. But they also have some differences, both the way they presents their findings and the technical depth in their work.

The paper from Fernaeus and Jacbosson was an interesting one, and the motto of HCI permeated the whole text - to make the technique understandable and easy to use. The authors made references between their work of programing to fashion and how people dress. Both those types of actions can be broken down to individual choices of making a unique style or concepts. The programing from the usage of different programming language and the fashion from the usage of different articles of clothing. That uniqueness was the authors starting point when implementing their idea of a "easy programming" that anyone can do. The work resulted in toys that were customizable to the wishes of the persons playing with them, different commands in form of pieces of papers or blankets could work in the same way as a programmed script - an easy way to tell the toy what to do. Moreover did I like the structure of the text, and that they implemented three different cases to their research, when doing so they made it easier to understand what concept they tried to mediate.

The paper from Réhman, Sun, Li and Li was the first text of this course I read with complete joy, but that was probably because the subject was football and how to make a live experience applicable for people not being there, turning your mobile into the ball using vibration. The paper overall feels trustworthy and well written. In their work process is it clear to see how vital the prototype is for their research, if they only discussed the questions without a clear prototype would the research almost be redundant in the HCI community. Another well written part of the paper was the conclusion, they did not only summarize and conclude what they had done, they also took the reflexions one step further and finished their paper with this sentence: 

"We believe that by integrated stimulation of our three basic senses: touch, hearing and sight, the sense of cognition is engaged more fully and it will give users richer emotional experience." 

The only thing missing in the paper was how and why they selected the persons they did for their user studies, the end result can differ a lot depending on the characteristics on the participating persons. Even though they had a relatively high number of qualitative users in their study were they all students and staff members between 20-50 years old. To get a higher grade from me should they have focused better on a clear segment of people, alternatively motivate why they wanted the people they used. If should not feel as if they only took those people because they could not find anyone else.

Since media technology is a multidisciplinary subject are there many ways of evaluating and presenting the findings of a research. Depending on which field the paper operates within can different solutions be applicable. One of the absolute best ways to evaluate a theory or a concept, especially in the field of HCI is with prototypes. I have now, after almost four and a half year at KTH, come in contact with different kinds of prototypes many times and it is interesting to see how much i believe it contributes with, especially in a group project. 

The big advantage of using prototypes is that the general idea you might have in the beginning will be much clearer, since you have to think of every little detail when creating the prototype. Further is it much easier to show other what you mean with a clear visualization. But for every good item is there at least one limitation, in this case the limitations of using a prototype in your research can be that a complete objective response can be hard to retrieve. If you show your clean and beautiful prototype to a test subject can that person feel ashamed of giving critique and not dare to question the functionality, only focusing on not so vital questions, like colors and fonts. This limitation can however be prevented by making the prototype very rough, making the test subjects more likely to comment on every detail without feeling bad about finding inaccuracies in the presented prototype. To conclude, I do believe that the usage of prototypes is an excellent way of giving an academic paper more depth.