Theme 5 Reflection

Unfortunately my migraine held me from going to today’s seminar, but after hearing with the others about the important thing from it the design process is much about prototypes. It is a circular process, when you start with theory, then you create your prototype out of this theory and then you evaluate it by using some kind of user tests. Then you go back and do it all over again. This is as I said in the previous blog post the way to work with design processes.

To create a prototype I don’t think it has to be fully working though. The important thing is that the feature you are supposed to test right now is working. You have to be able to test the correct variable in your prototype testing, and this variable can change depending on which stage in the process you are. In some stage of the design research process you of course have to have a fully working prototype but this can be in a later stage.

Before this theme I thought that maybe I’m not going to do much design research in my area of image and video processing which I am interesting in and that the only ones doing design research are the pure designers. Of course this is not true. All areas of engineering need to make a design research in some way in some stage. All areas of engineering have to make prototypes of their product to be able to find the problems you can’t find out mathematically or theoretically. You have to test everything in real life and not just on the paper. In other sorts of science, like pure social science if don’t think that design research in this form exists though. Here models are developed for human behavior, and this is also tested in real life, but not by prototypes, but by observing and then analyzing. Maybe the prototype step is a step in this big process that isn’t needed or even possible in social science but in all kinds of product creating. 

Theme 4 reflection

So, qualitative methods, what is it? Our collaborate info about qualitative methods now says “ “Qualitative Research Methods: A Data Collector’s Field Guide”, a qualitative research is especially effective in obtaining culturally specific information about the values, opinions, behaviors, and social contexts of particular populations. “. But in this view about qualitative methods I believe that we have gone a step towards pure social science research in some way where it is all about human behavior. Maybe that is what media technology is about? I think that we in this part of the course about the methods should discuss even more what kind of research that is special about media technology. It is a broad area, yes, but it still is an area.

We discussed a lot in our group about how to evaluate the data you get from a qualitative research. You have to be careful and look at your own views a lot when analyzing this data because the results can easily be affected by you as a researcher. I have read about a view called constructionism and this is about that there is no objective reality, especially not in the social world. This is about that people construct their reality based on their beliefs and expectations. This is a thought as hard as the discussion about knowledge in the beginning of the course. I still think it is very important to have these thoughts in the back of your head when talking about qualitative research. How can you be neutral when the research is about human behavior? We also discussed phenomenologism and this view is about that a person’s perception is what creates the persons reality. And people don’t perceive things in the same way. Therefore people’s reality is different and this is what is studied.

Qualitative research is though important and interesting but my point is that it should be made with caution and a open mind. Otherwise is can easily go wrong.

Reflection Theme 3

This week has been interesting. Quantitative methods are interesting and as a student you have to be able to master it. I think the hard and interesting thing about it is to find the correct sample size for your cause.  In the article about Mixed Research they use one source for all their information about sample size, namely Onwuegbuzie, A. J., & Leech, N. L. From these authors they have seven different books and articles about sample sizes and other info about how to research with qualitative, quantitative as well as mixed research methods. This is very good to know when it’s time for me to look at my methods in my master thesis this spring.

For quantitative research it is very important to know how you should make your polls, and even more important to be able to know how to use this data. Already after trying SPSS in the lab this week I’m sold. It’s the perfect way to present your data in an easy as well as complex way. To run frequencies in a easy and effective way is perfect. I think it is pretty hard to do this in excel but the cross-tabulate function in SPSS is easy. In the lab me and Jacob compared the two questions “Did you listen to radio yesterday(and for how long)” and “Did you read any special journal yesterday(and how many?)”. It isn’t perhaps the two most obvious questions to compare, but the point is that in just a minute we compared the answers of these two questions and got a nice diagram over the whole thing. I felt like Hans Rosling for a few seconds and I am sure that I’m going to use this tool in my master thesis.

Data mining and presentation is of course one thing, but the important thing is what conclusions you draw from it and where you go next. I think that I have learnt that after the nice presentation of my data I almost have a responsibility to make something out of it at make sure that the correct conclusions is made.

Theme 2 - Reflection

What is theory then? This week hasn't made it any clearer to me. The more I have thought about the more problems I have explored. It is something very complex and we discussed in our group if a theory is something that is true for you, at this very moment. That way we of course got to the problem about what is true and what is not, but apart from that it is a interesting way to look at theory, if you can back it up it can be true for you. We also discussed what’s needed to create a theory. Can you create your own personal theory that applies for example whether you will be hungry at some moment or not. And how is there any special context that is needed for a theory? Or can you create a general theory. As you can see I think the subject this week just created more questions and I got somehow even more puzzled.

But even thought I can’t put words on what a theory is, I still think I know what it is. And how is that? It is because of all the theories we have looked at. Theories about game-theory and signal theory and so on. And that is the most important. To see what these theories does for their subject. They are some kind of thinking-help. A general way to think about the subject. It is not a model, and not data, but some kind of guidelines for thinking.

The point with all of this is that a theory is the best way to explain a way of thinking and according to Wikipedia the word comes from the ancient Greeks and the technical meaning of it was a “contemplative or speculative understandings of natural things” which also shows that it is a way of thinking and understanding things and the word was used by the ancient philosophers.

Reflection Theme 1

It has been an interesting theme this week with much new information. The philosophical angle has been very interesting and there has been a lot of new question that will puzzle me in the near future. I have already started to read parts of the Theaetetus and I will definitely read more philosophy in the future. It is interesting to get interesting things to think about.

I have been thinking about knowledge and what it really is before, but not in this formal way. The best thing I have learned is the thought of everything that will have impact on the knowledge. The fact that for example the way you form a question can change the whole answer will be of much interest in my upcoming thesis.

To find papers and journals haven’t been any problem for me yet. I think it depends mostly because of my interest in the narrow subject of image processing since it is easy to search for that subject. It may also be since I am rather used to use the databases from KTH library and also the library at the Stockholm University.

Impact factor Is though new to me. It is good to be able to check how good the journal is and if you can believe what it publishes. But there are though some questions marks. Stefan mentioned that some journals ask the writers who gets published in the journal to quote other papers in that journal. That way they get a higher IF. The other is if the impact factor really shows the things that makes a paper good or if there are other criteria’s that should have been included. But it’s a good guideline.