Comments on other blogs

Grade C: A posting has been submitted prior to and after each theme, on time. The student has prepared for each theme and has reflected on what he/she learnt during the week. The quality of the postings is good. The student has commented on at least two other blog postings during the week.

Theme 1

Jonas
The definition you propose on knowledge is good, but I think your reasoning right after could be more comprehensive. If we spin on with the sun as example: you [as an individual human] may not know why the sun is rising every morning, but we [as a species] can describe with the help of physics, mathematic, chemistry and so on. So since we can predict when the sun no longer shines, is it still a justified belief or is it knowledge?

I don't know if what I've wrote makes sense, just ask and I'll try to clarify. [Link]

Bobby

Your reflections are quite interesting, but I disagree only mainly two parts: 

1) Theme 1 being "a good crash-course on the subject of epistemology"

and

2) "some things you cannot measure"

I disagree with the first point simply because I feel like we didn't really have much time to learn the subject of epistemology. Only having a few days to try to understand such a debatable subject is too little. Sure, we may come back to it further into the course, but not in such depth, that I believe, is needed to really understand the area of the problem. Generally, I think philosophy is interesting and something there should be more of in all different kinds of higher education.

2) I don't know on what ground you say this, but I'll share my view on it anyway. I believe you actually can measure everything; it's just that we don't have the tools or the capacity to do so now or ever will. Now you may ask, how is that? Well, too keep it short and not to get lost in semantics, let's say that atoms are the smallest units we can observe. And as we've been taught, they move in probability patterns. Therefore, if we have enough computing power, we should be able to predict everything, no? So even things like emotions, which usually isn't quantifiable, could be predicted, if the assumption made is correct. However, it would require such massive computing power to predict the everything, that we might as well say that we cannot measure some things.

My reasoning regarding 2) may/is not (be) on a higher level; and frankly quite a lack luster; maybe not even dignifying an answer, but I have the belief that you discuss such things in more advanced philosophy. [Link]

Bobby (follow up)
Thanks for taking time and answering my question, and sorry for not replying sooner. I thought I would get an automated mail from blogger since that's what happens when I get comments on my own blog.

Anyway, in hindsight, I feel my argumentation was really weak, as you really demonstrate by crushing it ;). An argument in line with what you said ,(but don't quote me on this one) is that mathematicians have "proved" that we'll never be able to understand everything, due to limitations of math. I don't know where I've read it, but maybe in relation to quantum mechanics. So maybe the same argument but different worded.

On the first point we'll have to agree to disagree; the introduction haven't (yet) sparked any kind of interest for me in the field of epistemology. Your point may be true, but I really feel that where too little time to begin to grasp the concepts.

In closing, I would also like to quote from the hitchhiker:

"There's all sort of stuff going on in dimensions thirteen to twenty-two that you really wouldn't want to know about. All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it's pretty damn complicated in the first place"

Once again, thanks for replying! [Link]

Theme 2

Beau
Quite nice that you wrote your whole post in style of addressing a first year student. However, I didn't quite get what theory in the selected paper explains. Is it that they explain how the mind interprets the movie's narrative by observing the movements of the eye? If that is the case, wouldn't it be more interesting to have a theory with which you also could predict how to make better movies? I.e. type IV theory. [Link]

Jonas
I'm not sure if I got you quite right, but you mean that in this particular paper, prediction is not so important? Or is this a general statement? I assume it's for this paper only, and if thats so, I kind of agree with you. I think it's important that when you have a type IV theory, that you give equal attention to both parts of the theory. If you don't explain them both properly, it will be hard for future researchers to do their own work based on the theory in your paper, if the explanation is done poorly. As a end note, I think CSCL sounds interesting from what I can gather from your post. [Link]

Theme 3

Beau
Post lecture and exercise, I still find the paper kind of bad. I don't really think you can quantify emotions, it always end up with something arbitrary; and that is still what I think about the paper. The lecture didn't really shed any new light at the matter for me, but I find it intriguing that you got a better understanding and I'll hope I have some kind of revelation later on. [Link]

Jonas
I don't really see why a person dropping out of a test would make the results less valid; you as a researcher can't predict what will happen. And if the dropout is replaced with another random sampled person from the same target group; will the study still have less validity? [Link]

Theme 4

Beau
I don't exactly know how they spread the participants over the different qualitative methods, but I think a sample size of 370 is really huge for a qualitative study. I don't know if you have done interviews or any other kind of qualitative studies during your education, but I can tell you this much: you generate a lot of data by just interviewing one person for one hour. Even more so if you have several persons in a focus group. [Link]

Jonas
Interesting that you have a paper regarding ICT in the classroom; I have more or less the same but from the teachers point of view, though mine was about ICT generally speaking. I think it's nice that there are researchers who take on the POV from different demographics in the classroom. [Link]

Mattias
Like you, I also found this week repetitive. Which is good! We'll hopefully get a deeper understanding of the subject if it's approached from different views, or partly different views. Anyway, there are several more papers by Ylva at dl.acm.org, and at least one of them is a follow up on actDresses, if you want to read more about that. [Link]

Niklas
As you note in the last paragraph, this weeks paper seemed to fit more with next weeks theme. Although one could argue that content analysis is a qualitative method, I believe as you that it was a heavily design infused paper. [Link]

Theme 5

Mattias
I don't know if you really can say that the study is dated; I doubt that there are many that are many today that would watch a whole football game on a phone. I find it tedious to watch anything long on the phone, but that may be just me. And I would also like to believe that it is even more so when watching a sport, since you have to stay focused [almost] all the time or else you'll miss out. [Link]

Niklas
So collaborative design is defined as when people design something in a system independently? Or did I just misinterpret your explanation? Otherwise, I would say that you always use collaborative design when doing something, unless you're flying solo on a project. [Link]

Reflections on Theme 5 - What I've learnt

As I feared in my previous blogpost, I didn’t really learn anything new this week. Sure, Haibo’s lecture was interesting, but he didn’t really mention anything that I already hadn’t heard before. The seminar wasn’t so refreshing this week either; partly because there were too little time to discuss each others papers before we had to start and work on the visualization of design research. Though it was kind of fun to make a flowchart, and it may even better the understanding of design research, since you had to really think about how to represent the workflow in just one picture. So I guess I may have learnt something new, even if it was very little this week around.

As I haven't learnt anything except what I mentioned above, and really don’t feel the need to indulge myself further into this topic to learn more, since I feel that I can’t really learn anything new and fascinating in the little time I have left before the deadline, I’ll end this second to last blogpost now.

Theme 5

I feel that I’ll learn very little new from the next weeks theme. This is due to the fact that I last year studied the HCI bachelor degree program. There was a heavy focus on end users, from who we got data, both qualitative and quantitative. So reading the paper for next week, I recognized the whole process. But I guess it’s good that you repeat what you already know, because the it will be easier to utilize the >knowledge<. It’s like the latin saying, repetitio est mater studiorum, kind of. Anyway, I’ll now answer the questions.

1. How can media technologies be evaluated?

1. By involving the end users in some way. I mean, you can yourself test the system and try to find weaknesses, but it’s hard. It’s even harder for you, because you’re too familiar with the system, so can’t really think outside of the box. So when a new user test your system, they are more likely to find out things that you haven’t even thought about.

2. What role will prototypes play in research? Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype? (I mashed together question 2 and 3 since they thread in the same territory.)

1. I think it’s important to have some kind of prototype to test out your idea. You may think that you’ve a really good concept, but when you try it out with a prototype, you’ll find out that it needs some reworking if you want it to succeed. Or you’ll encounter some unexpected bugs that needs to be ironed out. So it’s a good way to catch on early if you should pursue your research or change directions. Sometimes, it may be hard to develop a prototype, and even take some time, but I think it’s essential to do so if you really want to succeed with your research.

3. What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?

1. Generally speaking, prototypes are easy, cheap and fast to build. Or this really depends on if you want a low fidelity or high fidelity prototype. As with almost everything in life, you have to weigh pros and cons before you make your decisions. So one of the limitations is how much you can afford to spend on building the prototype. Another limitation is that you can’t have every possible functionality in the earlier prototypes. So if something works in the earlier prototypes, it may break when you add more functionality. But such problems can be avoided the more experienced you are.

The paper that I found by myself is Evaluating the usability of a head-up display for selection from choice lists in cars, with the authors Weinberg et al.. I found it on ACM Digital Library, which is the same place where the paper by Ylva can be found. So I presume everything is of high quality (because I can’t seem to find the IF). Anyway, here we go.

1. How is theory being used to guide the design process?

1. While not explicitly stating any theory, they seem to be guided by a theory of that you drive worse when you take your eyes of the road. This may seem trivial, but they make some references to this. Also, they seem to be using an UCD approach when designing the three different ways of interaction with the in-vehicle information system (e.g. radio, GPS). The three ways are audio, HUD (heads up display) and HDD (heads down display).

2. Which research method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

1. User evaluation, which in this case mean both qualitative and quantitative. They measured the time it took to complete the task and also asked which way they thought were the more efficient one. Although audio feedback was measured the most effective, the HUD was perceived as the most effective by the users. It can’t really see any real limitation for method in this case.

3. What did you learn about conducting design research from reading the paper?

1. Not so much. As stated earlier in this blogpost, not so much is new to me for this theme. I have a pretty solid foundation, so I hope that I’ll learn something new next week, either during the seminar or lecture.

References

Réhman, S., Sun, J., Liu, L., & Li, H. (2008). Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 10(6), 1022-1033.

Weinberg, G., Harsham, B., & Medenica, Z. (2011). Evaluating the usability of a head-up display for selection from choice lists in cars

Reflections on Theme 4 - What I've learnt

To be honest, I haven't really learnt anything mind blowing new this week. This is due to the fact that I used qualitative methods during my bachelors degree thesis and that I participated in another bachelors degree thesis where they used focus groups. I used a semi structured interview style, after contemplating between open, structured and semi-structured. The only qualitative method that I hadn’t heard about before was content analysis. Although the term is new, the concept feels familiar and may be something that I’ve heard/used in previous courses. I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned it, but the last year I studied the bachelor program for HCI, so it’s probably there I’ve come in contact with the concept. So from this point of view, it was a kind of dull week, intellectually, for this course.

The most interesting that came up during the lecture was the concept of Phenomenology, as mentioned by Bobby. It seems like an interesting way of doing science, if I understand it correctly (and if the info on the Wiki is correct). And as I understand it, it seems to be a lot more self reflective; that knowledge comes from within oneself. This interpretation may be wrong, but I think it’s in line with what was said during the lecture. This notion is really great and is very agreeable with my view of learning right now. I think you learn the most in any subject by first perceiving and then reflecting on the matter. This is of course, as mentioned earlier, if I’ve understood the concept of Phenomenology correctly.

I’ll end this reflection with some comments on the lecture. I felt that the first part of the lecture was a snooze, since it was more or less an explanation of the paper that we had to read. I had a hard time to focus, so I may have missed out on new stuff, if there were any. However, the second part was better, when we got to discuss different aspects of the paper. It was fun with a more active lecture and a good exercise to critique a paper with other students. Although I didn’t get much out of the discussions, it was good to hear the opinions of other.

Theme 4

The paper I’ve chosen is by Erixon (2010). In this paper, the goal was to find out teachers relation to using ICT in class and what they expect from them. The sample is quite small (n=23), so it’s more of a pre study than a full study. Or maybe inductive research is a better term to describe it. Nonetheless, it was published in a high quality journal and it have been cited 11 times. Erixon explains thoroughly how he went about when he conducted the study, which is why I find the paper of being of high quality, despited not being cited that much. Without further ado, I’ll now answer the questions.

1. The qualitative method used in the paper were focus groups. Though Erixon describes them as interviews, and interviews are pretty straightforward; you ask questions and the interviewee answers them. The difference is that in focus groups you sit two or more people together and discuss the questions that the interviewer ask. So it’s kind of a stricter form of discussion groups; you yourself don’t decide what you’ll talk about. So it’s a trade of losing control from individual interviews to get more perspectives at once. In general, there is a risk that there will be an unspoken consensus of what is ok to say and not to, if people are coming from a homogenous group. Participants may not be able to speak up about what they think because the fear repercussions of what may happen. However, in this particular study, Erixon wants to get to the group thinking, because he believes that it will better reflect the general attitude to ICT in school. A main benefit I haven't mentioned is that you can yield high amounts of data in a short period of time.

2. The main thing I really learnt about focus groups is how you can turn a disadvantage to an advantage, depending on how you design a study. Last year, I actually did participate in a focus group regarding the effects of 3D-TV and how it affected my relation to the on screen characters, so the concept of focus groups in not new to me in that sense. So when reading the paper by Erixon, I found it really interesting that obvious disadvantages can be turned around, and it made me wonder if you can do so for other methods too.

3. To be honest, I find it hard too see how you could improve the study. As I mentioned, the sample is quite small, so maybe double or triple it and take participants from several schools would make it more rigid. You could also interview persons one at a time, but that wasn’t the goal as stated by Erixon.

To wrap things up, I’ll share my thoughts on the paper by Fernaeus & Jacobsson (2009). From an IxD perspective, I found it really good and interesting. They describe the concepts in an easy to understand way. However, serving as a bridge between qualitative research and design research, it is poor. It is more or less genius design, as they haven't conducted any kind of research with potential end-users, which is kind of required in qualitative methods. So altogether, the paper is really good in the field of IxD, but not in fields where you have to have some contact with the end-users.


References
Erixon, PO. (2012). School subject paradigms and teaching practice in lower secondary Swedish schools influenced by ICT and media. Computers & Education. IF 2.6 (5Y 3.0)

Fernaeus, Y. & Jacobsson, M. (2009). Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction. New York: ACM

Reflections on Theme 3 - What I've learnt

I think this week's seminar/exercise and lecture was quite interesting and fruitful. As I hoped last week, I’ve learnt quite a lot more about quantitative methods. Or not, really depends on your epistemology definitions. Anyway, of the lecture and the seminar/exercise , I found the exercise much better. It was a good introduction and quite fun to tinker with SPSS. Even though the GUI was quite simplistic, there were some serious capabilities underneath. I think it would’ve been better if we have had more than one hour to get acquainted to the program. Sure, you could sit yourself and play around with it, but then you wouldn’t get any help from a teacher/PhD. I’ll see if I’ll sit down with SPSS further down the road.

So far, my reflection has been quite general, so from here on, I’ll go through step by step (kind of) on what I did together with Niklas during the exercise.

As pictured above, the first thing we did was to make a table for question 32 “Did you listen to radio yesterday? IF yes; for how long in total?” It was a single choice question, so there weren’t really any hassle to analyze it with the program. Pretty straightforward.

The second task was to do the same but with a multiple response question. This was also pretty straightforward, although it was kind of hard to make out the responses in the window since you couldn’t resize it. We forgot to screenshot it, but we got a screenshot of a multivariable cross table, with when you listened and with what, as seen above.

The next task was to make a visualization with excel. You can see two of the above; the staple diagram and a linear one. Of them both, the staple one is far superior and really makes it easy to identify the times in which people listen and with what. The distribution seems to be the same for all the mediums, which could point out that there may be some problems with the questions. However, as Ester pointed out, the study from which we got our data is rigid, so the patterns are correlating to reality.

The last task was to tinker with the explore option. We chose to check out the statistical page. As you can see above, you get the statistical information presented neatly, which is good, since doing it manually is quite a hassle. Although it doesn’t say much now, but if you compare the same answers over several years you can see if the deviation is a coincidence or a “permanent” change in behaviour.

Theme 3: Quantitative methods

The first thing that I really noticed, or came to my mind, after reading the two papers for this theme was that I once again came in contact with grounded theory (Cleveland-Innes et al. 2011), as I did in Theme 1. Although the name would suggest that it is a theory, it is, however, more a methodology on how to construct a theory. But since that is the case, I guess you could say that grounded theory (GT) is kind of a type V theory as Gregor (2006) proposed as a theory type. Anyway, GT seems to be very flexible when it comes to analyzing and making relations between data, both quantitative and qualitative. So maybe it’s something that I’ll use in some future school paper, who knows.

The theme for next week is supposed to be quantitative methods, but the readings touch more or less mixed methods, although the one by Lowenthal et al. (2009) is explicitly about mixed methods. Although the paper purpose itself as an examination on how to do proper research on e-learning, I think it serves a better purpose as a general guide on how to do mixed research. I found the emphasis on e-learning not getting so much attention in the paper, which is why I think it serves a better purpose as a general guide. Despite missing it’s own point/purpose, I think the paper excels in explaining the problems with conducting research and a must read before you yourself conduct mixed research.

Going back to Cleveland-Innes et al. (2011), I would like to examine the conclusions and the impact (adding knowledge and implications) of the paper. I think the conclusions are indeed logical extensions of the data; however, it’s hard for me to really tell because I have no relation or understanding of data tables presented in the paper. I’ve tried to read through a couple of more times, but I still have hard understanding the numbers. Maybe after having conducted the workshop next week I’ll have a better understanding of quantitative data. The conclusions says that, “yeah, emotion is present in e-learning”, paraphrasing it down to easy to understand english. So it’s kind of a kickstarter; they make suggestions on how to do a more rigid research in the same field, so the conclusions are kind of useful if you yourself want to know where to start.

What impact does the paper then have on future research? Well, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, they make suggestions on how to carry on. However, I don’t think that they have brought so much new things to the table, so to speak. They themselves says that the results are in line with previous work, that suggest that emotion is present in e-learning. Even though that is the case, I understand that social sciences needs to redo the same research from time to time, incase of cultural change, different times etc. However, I find it kind of odd asking if emotion is present in learning, or in this case e-learning. Of course emotion is always present regardless what we humans do! But alas, you can make no such assumption when doing research, so I suppose the paper add a small step to the common knowledge of humanity. If I could change one thing about the paper, it would be to better explain the diagrams and numbers. Maybe it is explained good in the paper, but then I’m totally missing it. Next week may bring some clarification to that.

I look forward to next week and I hope I’ll learn a lot about quantitative methods!


References:
Cleveland-Innes, M. & Campbell P. (2011). Emotional presence, learning and the online learning environment. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning.

Gregor, S. (2006), The Nature of Theory in Information Systems

Lowenthal, P. R. & Leech, N. (2009). Mixed research and online learning: Strategies for improvement. In T. T. Kidd (Ed.), Online education and adult learning: New frontiers for teaching practices. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Reflection on theme 2 - What I’ve learnt

I found this seminar really interesting and giving, or as one might say: fruitful. It was really fun to discuss the different theories and what theory in fact is. Before this week’s theme, my perception of theory have been what you might describe as a type IV: explanation and prediction. It’s been very rooted in my thinking that that is theory. So it was quite refreshing to learn new definitions of theory. Albeit that they might be discussed a lot whether or not they’re in fact theories, but that is not something I plan to take on in the immediate future.

What I would like to do, however, is to focus on a theory that I found quite interesting. And that theory is ”Theory of binaural sound synthesis”. I’ve come in contact with this theory before, and even worked with it to some extent, but I decided to try and find new papers and ways of applying it. One area in which you can apply it is movies: to get a feeling of actually being at the scene. Computer games could also be more immersive, but that pose another problem: it’s hard to do real-time binaural. Maybe in the future with quantum computing.

Anyhow, the most interesting paper i found was by Sonoda et al. (2001) published in the journal “Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry with Practical Neurology” (IF 4.764). In the paper, they set out to find how brain damage on either the right side or the left side of the brain affected the ability to locate the direction of sounds (the damage was caused by a stroke). To do this, they used binaural sounds that came through a headphone. The hearing was otherwise good for the test subjects, and they were in such mental condition that they fully understood everything. The sounds came from a field of 180 degrees, with the center directly in front of the test subject. The researchers found out that people with damage on the right side of the brain where more prone to errors, which “may be explained by the inattention theory of hemispatial neglect”.

It’s really fascinating that you can apply a design theory in field of audio technique in the field of medical research. That truly shows how a general theory have the possibility to do so much more than a specific and contextual one.


Reference
S Sonoda, M Mori, A Goishi. (2001) Pattern of localisation error in patients with stroke to sound processed by a binaural sound space processor

Theme 2

The paper I’ve selected is A method for improving ERP implementation success by the principles and process of user-centred design, which were published in the journal Enterprise Information Systems, whom have an impact factor of 3.684. Without further ado, I’ll answer the questions.

1. A theory is  a tool with which you can analyze your data, or other things depending on the purpose of your research. There are mainly five different types of theory: analytical, explanatory, predictive, explanatory and predictive in conjunction and design and action. The distinction/categorization is pretty self explanatory between each type. From this it is easy to see that things commonly mistaken as theory, such as data, references, variables, diagrams and hypotheses, are in fact not theory.

2. The major theory this paper focus on is user centered design, UCD. Some may say that UCD is a methodology, but according Table 2 in Greger (2006), you can see it as a type five theory; that is, design and action. The idea of using UCD in this paper is to better design the Enterprise resource systems (ERP) systems better right away, so that the end user experience is smoother. The paper explores how you can combine these two processes. There is lengthy sections explaining both ERP and UCD, where UCD is the more of a media technology theory than ERP. Anyhow, if I got everything right, the paper only argues why using UCD in conjunction with ERP is good. There are references to work, but they serve more as exemplifying the theory, which I believe Sutton and Staw (1995) said were good, or at least good when trying out new theories and ways to apply them. Regardless, UCD in not a hard theory to grasp. The idea is that you get a better product by involving the persons that is going to use a system or an artifact,i.e the users. You do this throughout the design process, and in the end you’ll have a product that is is satisfactory and useful, according to the ISO-standards.

3. In this specific case, I think it is really good that UCD is the main theory so to speak. You’ll get a better product, which users will find more intuitive and useful, since they helped in the design of it. However, a risk that may arisen is that the users may make choices that is good for them, but will end up hurting the business. It’s when these kind of difficulties appears you as a designer have to make a choice; either go along with the theory you are designing with or decide yourself what is the best solution in the current case. Relying blindly on any theory may end up obfuscate more than it clarifies.

References:
 
Gregor, S. (2006), The Nature of Theory in Information Systems

Sutton, R.I.; Staw, B.M. (1995), What Theory is Not

Vilpola, I.H. (2007), A method for improving ERP implementation success by the principles and process of user-centred design

Reflection on theme 1 - What I’ve learnt

I find it hard to really reflect on what I’ve learned this week. Not because I haven’t learnt anything, but because there haven’t been even a day since the seminar. You don’t instantly learn new things; it takes a while for it to sink in and be of use. Or that’s atleast how it is for me. More often than not, I’ve had epiphanies for the courses I’ve taken weeks after they have had finished. But, since I have to do a reflection, I’ll give it my best shot.

Even before this course began, I’ve come in contact with the term impact-factor before. I stumbled upon it when I was doing my bachelors degree, but then it really wasn’t important what impact factor the journals I used had; the important thing was that they were peer-reviewed. So in that sense I haven't really learned anything new about journals, just reinforced what I already knew. But I am kind of sceptical of them, since a high impact factor really doesn’t say if the articles in the journal is good or not, only that they have been cited a lot. I don’t think this is a good measurement of quality, but on the other hand, I don’t really have a better way of quantize a journal/paper as of right now. It’s something I have to think about and then I’ll maybe come up with something good.

The other part of this weeks theme was philosophical science. I found it really interesting, but way too hard to understand in such short amount of time. I have a really limited knowledge in the field of philosophy; the only I’ve read was a course in high school (gymnasium in swedish), but that was only snippets from many philosophers throughout the history. Anyway, I have a really hard time right now seeing if I have learnt anything at all regarding my way of seeing science. The seminar was more or less fruitless for me; I didn’t get a better understanding of the book, or maybe it is that way as of right now. Maybe I’ll get it some weeks from now, who knows! Really though, I think it would have been better if we got some kind of basic introduction to philosophy instead of just jumping straight into it.