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.
It is interesting to hear that you have become interested in phenomenology. Is this a perspective you might draw on in your master thesis? It is quite complex and I think it requires quite a lot of reading to understand fully. In comparison with the paper, I think that it would be expected to be more self critical, which can be hard to do in a brief conference paper such as the one you read. It is an interesting idea to combine this perspective with more design oriented research. A common problem of design research is that it often lacks strong theoretical and methodological foundations.
SvaraRaderaI may or may not use it in my master thesis, depending on my interest when the time comes. Do you have any recommendations of what I should read?
Radera