Design Research - Reflection

This week’s theme was by far the most interesting one, and I really get the feeling that the whole course slowly moves towards the end. Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is an area that constantly evolves and demands more and more attention. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to attend a seminar or lecture this week since I was abroad, in New York City. To be able to make a proper reflection from this subject did I both discuss the literature with a classmate, who also visited New York and talk about HCI-questions with students from Long Island University and New York University I met during my trip.

It was really interesting to see how other students from other universities discussed this questions, and from what I understood did we not only have similarities, but also some differences. It felt like the American students had their main focus on design rather than functionality. They could get in to a deep heated argument for hours about which color was ultimate for a “home”-bottom on an idea similar to what Réhman, Sun, Liu and Li presented. But when questions regarding functionality were discussed, did not they have much to add and mostly sat quiet and listened. Of course can this be a pure coincidence, but when talking about how their universities taught compared to KTH was it clear that the teaching was not exactly the same.

After literature discussions with my traveling friend from class was it the paper from Fernaeus and Jacobsson that got stuck in our minds mostly, but that might be because she is not interested in football at all. Fernaeus and Jacobsson talk about physical programming, and how they made it much easier to program, using pictures and figures. That is in my opinion an excellent idea, programming should not be associated with nerdy asocial men, but with innovation and creativity. The authors even made a type of programming available for kids, where children could customize their toys and make commands that the toys acted on. That is exactly what I believe HCI is all about – how to make highly advanced prototypes usable for everyone, even young kids and/or old adults.

There are many things I feel like I have learned from this week’s topic, firstly that we can perceive a subject differently depending on personal characteristics, nationalities and education. And secondly that programming doesn’t necessarily have to be as “dull” as I sometimes perceive it to be. I hope that my knowledge in HCI has grown after this week, since I think it is an extremely important issue, and that I now possess the ability to think in a HIC-mindset.

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. 

Quantitative Research - Reflections

Since I started my first day at Rönninge elementary school have I come in contact with both qualitative and quantitative methods many times. Even though I did not understand the exact meaning of the two terms to the fullest have I at least used some of the different methods many times. I have done all from interviews with teachers about their thoughts on grading to oral surveys with my fellow classmates about the bad meals in school. It was not until my years in the academic circle at KTH I fully understood what quantitative and qualitative methods actually contributes to in an academic paper.

During my bachelor thesis in the spring of 2012 did my knowledge on quantitative and qualitative methods really came to a test, when I actually had to define what the two terms meant and make an active choice of what methods to include. When reflecting on my work today, after getting more understanding of the two terms and after reading many more academic papers compared to 2012, can I admit that I did not fully understand what I was doing. I more or less took all “popular” qualitative and quantitative methods and mixed them up while indirect motivating my behaviour with: “the more the merrier”. Hence this course fits perfectly in my schedule, it is the period just before I am going to write my master thesis.

One thing I have reflected much on this past week is which of the two methodologies of collecting data I believe to be the best. On one hand can the quantitative data be much better because it will give the paper a broader understanding, since many more opinions can be involved, My selected paper for this week had for example almost half a million different inputs, therefore is it impossible to ignore what is being stated. What the quantitative data gain in the amount of different opinions, it lacks in quality of whom the opinions comes from. A comment and an estimation on the future of the Swedish economy will for example be much more trustworthy if it comes from a professor from a Swedish University rather than a thousands kinder garden teachers. In that sentence can the qualitative methods be much better fitted than the quantitative since it provides a deeper understanding to the paper.

It will be extremely interesting to see how I will construct my master thesis after Christmas, will I make the same mistake of just adding all methods in a foggy mix or will I take decisions based on academic thoughts? I believe that this week’s subject has not only made me gain more knowledge of how to collect empirical data, it has also made me reflect deeper on why we collect data, and to what purpose.

Theme 4: Quantitative Research

Geography of Twitter Networks

The research paper I chose was published 2012 and comes from the journal Social Networks, with the impact factor of 3.381. The authors Takhteyev, Gruzd and Wellman wrote Geography of Twitter Networks and is a quantitative study of the different ties between different Twitter-users. Further do they investigate how physical proximity, the traveling distance, national boundaries and language all affects the ties within Twitter. 

The authors built a Python script for collecting available public Twitter data during a groundwork period of seven days in their quantitative method. They retrieved 481,288 messages that Twitter made public in their official timeline, the data therefore may not necessarily be random, but it is the data that Twitter chose. During that seven days were  around 100 millions Twitter messages published, so they retrieved approximately 0,5 percent of the published data. After retrieving the information did Takhteyev et al. further try to divide and review all of their quantitative data to be able to make a thorough analysis of their findings. 

After analyzing the data, the authors concluded that Twitter does not live up to their motto of "Transcending distance, connecting everyone with anyone" since most of the messages connects users within the same regional cluster. For the authors to be able to make such a statement is it demanded that a thorough investigation with a large database of users has been made. Since Takhteyev et al. almost had half a million users in their quantitative study can not the results be ignored, the number of participations brings power to their arguments.

Takhteyev et al. used the data that Twitter had chosen to become public, hence it exist a risk that the released messages do not reflect the ties that a "normal" user on Twitter has. Since they only took around 0,5 percent of all messages can that 0,5 percent be the messages that Twitter consider to be the best ones. If that is the case, the conclusions in the end of the text my be irrelevant. To improve the quality of the quantitative method and the quality of the paper would the authors gain much if they discussed this concern closer and argued that they believed in their chosen method.

I do however believe that their method on collecting data, by accessing public materials and sort them in a Python script, was brilliant. They do not only use a smart approach of collecting and sorting information, they successfully gather enormous amount of data.

Physical Activity, Stress, and Self-Reported Upper Respiratory Tract Infection

In this paper, Fondell, Lagerros, Sundberg, Lekander, Bälter, Rothman and Bälter made a quantitative population-based study, where the authors investigated the relationship between physical activity level, perceived stress and incidence of self-reported upper respiratory tract infection (URTI). They conducted a cohort study of 1509 Swedish men and women aged 20-60 years during a period of 4 month in their paper. They used a Web-based questionnaire to get information from the participants on how they lived, their disease status, their physical activity and their perceived stress. After analyzing the data, they concluded that people with moderate to high physical activity had a lower risk of URTI and that highly stressed people might benefit from physical activity.

There are different ways to gather empirical data when conducting a research paper, in this blog have I mainly mentioned the quantitative methods. The big advantage of using this method type is that you can get input from a huge number of persons. If not much research has been done in the area is it perfect to gather what the concerned masses thinks of the subject. Further can it be easy to compare and find solutions when analyzing the conducted data that supports your hypothesis. That is actually something I think Fondell et al. did well in the text, it felt like they had a clear hypothesis before they began their work, and used the empirical data to show that their speculations were correct.

Another well known method of collecting empirical data is the usage of different qualitative methods. If you have a paper and want a deeper and more thorough examination of the subject will quantitative methods, like interviews or focus groups of experts, give the paper more respect in the academic society. The limitations are that the qualitative methods do not include as many participants as the quantitative methods, hence it hard to get an understanding of what the masses believe to be true. 

Research and Theory- Reflections

After yet another week of this course and its content has the work of writing about a subject and the following reflection been a nice little routine in my life. What makes the routine enjoyably is that the subjects have become more and more interesting for every week. During this week was especially the formulation of what theory is and the search for journals been most intriguing. 

Since I first could summarize my thoughts properly in life have I made out theories of various subjects, all from which baby bottle I preferred to academic theories. Despite that, I have never really formulated a definition of what a theory really is, and what a theory is not. To first try and formulate what theory is for me, and after partake in my fellow students definitions has enriched my academic abilities. When I wrote my bachelor thesis 1,5 year ago was not the theory part not 100 per cent clear, hence the quality did not meet my personal requirement. Since I am writing my master thesis after Christmas, this theory definition has helped me a lot.  

Further was it good to participate in seminars, not only because it is a good chance to discuss complicated questions, but also because it is possible to hear about interesting papers from excellent journals. The only types of journals I was familiar with before this course was the big famous ones, which frequently appeared in mass media, like Nature. Hence, I have not worked so much directly with journals, since my collection of empirical data always been focused directly on finding relevant articles, and I have not looked for relevant journals. Since many of the journals are focus on very specific subjects am I going to change my behavior in collecting empirical data in the future. For that purpose is it good that a quality rating, in form of the impact factor, exist. The impact factor makes it easy to get a quick direct response of which quality the journal holds, so no time needs to be wasted. 

I believe that Gregor's text was well written, and he distinguished the different kinds of theory types in a clear way. Luckily for me was the task of choosing what type of theory my text had easy, the author of "Tastes, ties and time: A new social network dataset using Facebook.com" utilized the theory of analyses. For that purpose was the seminar good, to listen to my fellow peers and their motivations of choosing the theory type they did. Next text I will receive a text may it not be as easy to pinpoint what kind of theory being used, so the seminar helped me to get a broader understanding of the different types of theory.

Theme 3: Reserch and Theory

Journals

After going through different journals, did my focus first land at the journal "Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T)" with an impressive impact factor of 5.257. Even though the journal is highly regarded with good articles didn't I felt like it had enough media technology focus. My second big finding was the journal I finally chose; "Social Networks"  (ISSN: 0378-8733) from the Dutch publishing company Elsevier. Social Networks has a trustworthy impact factor of 3.381 and covers research on social network theories.  It aims to be a interdisciplinary journal containing mixed disciplines with the common interest of studies of the empirical structure of social relations. It publishes both theoretical and substantive papers.

Article

The article I chose came from the fourth edition 2008, from the journal Social Networks and is written by Lewis, Kaufman, Gonzalez, Wimmer and Christakis, authors from Harvard University and University of California. The text is called "Tastes, ties and time: A new social network dataset using Facebook.com" and is one of the most cited articles on Social Networks, with 350 citations on the database Google Scholar. The text is divided in two parts, part one is a huge dataset based on manipulations and embellishments of Facebook-users, and part two is analysis and conclusions of the presented dataset. The dataset contains 1640 students, freshmen's from an American university and analyses how they interact and behave on the social media platform Facebook. Lewis et al. believes that the use of social media is highly individual and some users "act out their social life" through Facebook and some don't. They believe that their work has much to offer and can for example be used for education and by scholars as empirical research. In my opinion is it an excellent paper to use as reference when constructing theories because it contains lots of basic facts, but I believe that the paper lacks in conclusions and analysis. Sure, it's an excellent dataset, but what is the consequence of all presented data and why?   

Theory 

Theory is a mental tool that can be used to construct an explanation to everything around us. A theory tries to give an understanding of what's going on and see connections between experiences and predictions. The two most important words that a theory is based on are how and why. How can for example an atom excite and why? To build a theory around excitation is it of importance to get an understanding of atoms, see all information clearly, observe the behaviour and try to see the interconnections. A theory can be used both in academic situations to support a hypothesis or in a sport bar to give an argument more power. 

Gregor's Theory Types

I believe that my selected text for this assignment "Tastes, ties and time: A new social network dataset using Facebook.com" had a clear theory type - the theory of analysing. Considering that the text gave an extensive description on how typical Facebook users behaves, how they are perceived and their characteristics, do I believe that the authors used the theory of analysing. Especially since the paper lacked enough explanations, predictions and instructions to be any other theory type.

It's important to use the theory of analysing if not enough extensive research and analysis has been done in the area before. Since Facebook only been launched for two years when the observations from Lewis et al. started in 2006, hadn't much previous studies on Facebook users been done before. Therefore does the theory type in the text play an important part, and many other authors have benefitted from their work. Although many other authors benefitted from their work, the limitations from this theory becomes clear when the paper clearly lack deep since no real conclusions been made. Even if the paper would have the highest potential ever, would the reader still get the feeling of unsatisfactory, since something felt missing. If future studies are required to get a satisfactory feeling, is it impossible to give the paper the highest rating, regardless of how well it's written. 

Critical Media Studies - Reflections

First of all, I'm glad that we had a seminar this week since I now have something real to reflect on, compared the unfortunate cancelation of last week's seminar. Going in to the seminar room, ready to start reflecting with Dahlberg and my fellow classmates was my expectations mixed. The positive surprise of the meeting was that we didn't only go through the seminar questions and talk about the general quality of the book by Adorno and Horkheimer, but also allowed ourselves to get wild and discuss other relevant questions. Another key insight from the seminar was that the heavy focus wasn't on the terms "enlightenment" and "myth" which I experienced beforehand, but rather "the culture industry" and "mass media / mass deception". That shift in focus was something that pleased me, since the authors' thoughts on those two subjects still is applicable today. Of course has both the culture industry and mass media / mass deception grown a lot and almost changed meaning since 1944, the year the book got published. But I believe that the key elements of the two subjects persist over time, and that's what making the book still relevant today. Now, as well as back then, is it still money and what the masses wants that controls the market. Both the positive effects e.g. information spread and the negative effects e.g. the risk of abusing power are still necessary to take under consideration.  

Our first big discussion in class concerned censorship, a subject I hadn't reflected so much upon in relation to the text by Adorno and Horkheimer. Some in class argued that they thought censorship was a good idea, since there are many damaging and awful things in life. My natural instinct was everything but understanding since I'm very liberal in my way of thinking. Because if we were to censor certain subjects or concepts in life, who should be the almighty persons whom decides what shall pass and what shall be censored? That idea sounds close to dictatorship. If we were to allow everything and not censor one single thin in life does it arise a couple of concerns though. One of the biggest is child pornography, if everything were to be allowed, does that mean that child pornography should be allowed? The problem with that line of thought is that innocent children get hurt in the process, which isn't acceptable. One alternative could be to allow everything and not censor anything except illegal activities, an exception which child pornography falls under. In conclusion, I do believe that nothing should be censured and it's up to each person to decide what to experience and what to avoid, as long as no one gets hurt or used in the process. 

Further was both the subject and literature good this week, Adorno and Horkheimer but up some good questions and much of what they wrote are important questions to discuss. Since they wrote it so long ago do they miss some relevant facts in their conclusions to make it 100 per cent relevant today. One of those facts were that they didn't point out that we consume media differently in different situations, the television is for example not always our first screen and main focus point.