PRE Theme 5: Design research

1. How can media technologies be evaluated?

By using the usability evaluation. It is, according to ISO (International organization of standardization), defined as effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. Effectiveness is how well the technology accomplishes the task, efficiency is how much effort it takes to use the technology and satisfaction relates to comfort and acceptability of the technology.

2. What role will prototypes play in research?

The prototype can be the link between theory and method in one way. From theory you create a prototype, and from the prototype you know witch method is necessary to do your research and evaluate the technology.


3. Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?

To demonstrate it’s feasibility and to actually have a prototype to use within your research. For example, in the paper about rendering a football game with mobile vibration, it was necessary to do a realization of the concept to do studies and evaluations.


4. What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?
How can design research be communicated/presented?
A prototype is a “realization” of the concept of the idé or product, but doesn’t necessary have to be a finished product. It is to demonstrate and do testing of the product and the ideas. There are practical limitations of a prototype. Building the full design is often expensive and time-consuming. Therefore it can be pragmatic to match the intended final performance of the product.

• How does a collaborative setting differ from a single user setting as regards methodology used and the results obtained?

In collaborative settings the research object isn’t a single person. Instead the research object is consists of two or more people. The results depend of two individuals or more. You have to make sure that the pairs or groups themselves are representative. But as the research objects consists of two or more people you can get different points of views from the same study by collect data from each person individually. An example is in the study A haptic tool for group work about geometrical concepts engaging blind and sighted pupils where there is a group of blindfolded and sighted people collaboratively performing a task.

• How can qualitative and quantitative methods in the same study complement each other?

With quantitative methods you get data that is easy to compare and evaluate. With qualitative data you get more depth and understanding is good to analyze why and how. With a method that includes both, for example semi-structured questions, you get answers that are easy to compare, but you can also ask more questions and follow-ups to investigate why they respond as they do on specific topics.

• ·How can using both subjective and objective methods give a better understanding of a phenomenon?

An objective method typically defies interpretation. But sometimes there are things that are difficult to measure. To get a better understanding you need both. For example, subjective methods can be used to identify specific results of the research that differs markedly from the others.