My comments

Theme 1: Theory of Science

Ragnar Schöns blog:

“Carl Ahrsjö 13 november 2013 01:45

I really enjoyed your summarizing sentence in question one: "To differentiate between the appearance of an object and the reality or "truth" of an object, Russell introduces sense-data and physical object where the former is the appearance of the latter." Its easy to understand while at the same time highly explanatory.

Your reasoning on what a statement of fact and what a proposition might be is solid, however I don't see any clear reasoning on how they might differ from other verbal expressions?

All and all I think that you answered the questions very well!”

Tommy Roshults blog:

“Carl Ahrsjö 13 november 2013 02:04

I like your summary of the notion of sense-data. It was very extensive and explanatory. Your examples of what a proposition might be rings true to me, but maybe you could have reasoned a bit more around what differentiate a proposition or a statement of fact in relation to other verbal expressions.”

Johan Gårdstedts blog:

“Carl Ahrsjö 13 november 2013 02:20

It was refreshing to read your different (but still very good) approach/build-up to what the meaning of "sense-data" is and that you highlight that it has to do with the difference between "appearance" and "reality"!

I'm unsure what you mean by "By proposition he means the statements about something, for example an object, name etc." Isn't it more like a statement that describes the name or object? Or am I wrong? Good to see that you put these terms (proposition and statement of fact) in relation to other (mathematical) terms!”

Theme 2: Critical Media Studies

On Stefan Etohs blog:

“Carl Ahrsjö 19 november 2013 12:30

I somewhat agree with your points on what "new" and "old" media are according to the authors. I think that the difference between them is partly that "old" media focuses on creativity and individualism while "new" media is the mass production media we have today. The "new" media often stands in the way of the "old" media.

I really enjoyed your examples on mass productions in "todays" society (Disney and Transformers). They sure seem to rely on their winning concepts.”

On Gustav Boströms blog:

“Carl Ahrsjö 19 november 2013 12:54

I believe that the "new" media you speak of came to be around the same time as the culture industry did. The "new" media is the media that is used to mass deceit and it leaves no room for the "old" media you speak of. This means that creativity and individualism often take damage.

I agree with your thoughts on mass media and mass deception. I believe that as long as the TV-show producers (for examples) can profit from such (often) brain-dead shows they will continue to spew them out. Maybe it is time for us as consumers to choose our content more carefully?”

Comment on Roshults comment on my blog:

“Carl Ahrsjö 21 november 2013 11:51

I agree with your thoughts on the culture industry as something that became very undemocratic and biased over time. At first though, my interpretation of the phenomena is that its purpose was to be something democratic and accessible for all. However, as we know by now, it turns out that we are exposed to this mass deception on a daily basis. Although you have a good point on that we as the consumers has a bigger impact on what we want to consume today. Maybe we should take this power more seriously?”

Theme 3 - Research and Theory

On Mårten Cedermans blog:

“Carl Ahrsjö 25 november 2013 11:49

I mostly agree with your explanation of what theory is, although in my opinion I would emphasize that a theory should answer the question "why?" primarily rather than "how?". It has to provide a logical ground for future argument and therefore express something about the reasons behind the statements. However we seem to share the opinion that theory has to contain some sense of interconnectedness.“

Answer to Poya Tavakolians comment on my blog:

“Carl Ahrsjö 25 november 2013 12:34

I agree with you that the "limitations" I speak of could be viewed as strengths but I argue that it is mostly a limitation due to its lack of broad perspective aspects. In order to be able to say something in general about the presence in golf simulators you have to be able to apply it in a wide scale. Not entirely sure that I understand what you mean by your second sentence?”

On Amanda Andersson Glass’ blog:

“Carl Ahrsjö 25 november 2013 13:08

I think that you summarized the question of what theory is very well and you supply valid arguments on which theories the authors of your paper use, and why they do it. However I think that one important benefit (that you didn't talk so much about) of using the design and action theory is that the complete model can be examined in other aspects, like completeness, simplicity and ease of use (Gregor 2006). Even though the model may not be relevant to a specific situation it can still be examined on these criteria. Or maybe this is what you were aiming at when you talk about "testing and analyzing the system through an experiment"?”

Answer to Stefan Etohs comment on my blog:

“Carl Ahrsjö 26 november 2013 11:46

To answer your questions the focus of the golfers in the paper were to have fun by playing golf and not to buy new clubs.

In the paper they aim to examine the relative importance of two dimensions, telepresence and social presence, in presence occurring during the virtual golf simulator experience. They provide a prediction that perceived enjoyment (a term defined in the area of social psychology) will supply the behavioral intention to play again. This perceived enjoyment also supplies perceived value (yet another term which I won't go into any deeper but you get the gist of it). The perceived value also increases the chances of a person playing again.

All and all they predicted that the sense of presence (both social and telepresence) would supply the relations described above. I mean that they over estimated the impact of telepresence as we saw in the results.

Hope this gave you a satisfying answer! :)”

Theme 4: Quantitative methods

On Oscar Fribergs blog:

“Carl Ahrsjö 2 december 2013 09:20

I think you summarized the quantitative and qualitative aspects well, however I would like to add my reflections on this. I believe that quantitative methods are more often used in relatively new research areas and qualitative methods are more often used in relatively established research areas. The relationship between them are that quantitative data creates a foundation on which you can create qualitative questions/data. Do you agree with me on this?”

On Martin Johanssons blog:

“Carl Ahrsjö 2 december 2013 09:39

I believe that the benefits that you speak of concerning surveying on the streets (many different people in different social groups) can be  considered a limitation as well. This of course depends on what kind of results you are after. If you don't have a specific target group it is beneficial.

You present a good point that the qualitative methods are often used when the results can't be quantifiable. I'd like to add to that by stating that qualitative methods are often used when quantitative results often already exists (so that you can base your qualitative questions on the quantitative results). Do you agree?”

On Marit Aldéns blog:

“Carl Ahrsjö 2 december 2013 10:30

I agree with Filip that the knowledge of which paper you read would have given some context for better understanding at first. It is indeed hard to get people to actually answer the questionnaire. I believe that you often have to offer some kind of reward if you want to get good (or just many) answers. Sometimes when you hand out your questionnaire by e-mail it can get caught in the spam filter which is another problem.

One thing I thought of was that qualitative methods are often used when quantitative results often already exists. The qualitative questions (via interviews as you speak of) can be more easily created when you have quantitative data on before hand. Do you agree?”

Theme 5: Design research

On Oscar Fribergs blog:

“Carl Ahrsjö 9 december 2013 09:27

I as well thought that the article by Fernaeus et. al. would have gained a lot if it would have contained some kind of real application. That is the one fact that I based my question on. What would a real application be? And also, is it clear that the end-users really want this kind of functionality? I understand that there are research that indicate that there exists a desire of new forms of programming, but is this really what is meant by that? Maybe it can serve as a first step towards something good, but I do not know what that would be at this point. The article certainly leaves you thinking!”

On Martin Johanssons blog:

“Carl Ahrsjö 9 december 2013 09:40

You make a good point that this kind of physical "coding" might be a gateway for children or inexperienced programmers to further investigate the world of programming, and that is of course a very good thing! However I fail to see what other use physical programming might have in the real world. What would be a real application, today or in the future?

After reading what you said about the benefits of prototyping its clear to me that financial backing has to be one of the main reasons, or at least motivators, to make a really good prototype. I can't believe that I didn't think of that! Maybe you have a more entrepreneurial spirit than I do. This of course depends on what your goal with your research is. It might be to get a market share in a specific field, or it might be to contribute to the scientific development of a specific area (or maybe both?).”

On Sara Långviks blog:

“Carl Ahrsjö 9 december 2013 09:56

I think that you summarized the part about prototypes nicely, however the part where you say that a prototype might "fail to deliver the specific information we're looking for in the way we expect it" caught my attention. In my opinion, when a prototype fails to deliver what was expected might still count as some kind of result. It might tell you what not to do or how not to design something and I mean that a result like that always will benefit future research. It might also give you some information that you hadn't yet considered as a possibility.

I enjoyed reading what you wrote about "proof-of-concept" prototypes. I have been racking my brain for some time now and I can't find a situation where making a proof-of-concept prototype is bad. In my opinion it can only benefit the design or implementation of a, for example, future product or system.“

Theme 6: Qualitative and Case study research

On Jakob Florells blog:

“Carl Ahrsjö 16 december 2013 09:29

Hi, Jakob!

When reading the part you wrote about semi structured interviews I can't ask myself what the difference between those kinds of interviews and the focus group method is? A focus group is used in the paper I read for this weeks seminar, and that implies that you as a moderator want the participants to feel free to partly come up with the discussion topics themselves. You just have to steer them in the right direction from time to time as to keep the discussions relevant to your research questions. I don't have a lot of experience using semi structured interviews, and to be honest I haven't googled it either, but would you say that the two different methods have a lot in common? What separates them in your opinion?”

On Johannes Hörnfeldt Nordströms blog:

“Carl Ahrsjö 16 december 2013 10:08

Hi, Johannes!

I also read that qualitative studies are best used in relatively new research areas, however I argue that quantitative methods can generate good results as well in these new areas. Of course some qualitative results can be of good use when you try to define what kind of quantitative, statistical information you want to receive, but still I believe that some general quantitative questions could be asked together with the qualitative ones (in new research areas). Maybe this could at least give you a better idea of the basic structure of the research area.”

Answer to Katerina-Ioanna Kourti’s comment on my reflection:

“Carl Ahrsjö 18 december 2013 11:21

Hi!

Yes, of course the personality of the participants and the dynamics between them in general play an important role when it comes to the potential vividness of the discussion. However I mean that this is all secondary to the moderators ability to influence others and to what extent he/she has prepared for the focus group meeting by, for example, setting a time limit for each discussion/question. It might also be good to have some kind of strategy for how you will move the discussion along if it stagnates.”

Theme 6: Reflection

In this weeks seminar we mainly talked about our qualitative papers that we personally chose to read. We began by summarizing the main content and conclusions of the paper and by discussing the different qualitative methods that the authors used in their research. Our group mostly discussed the difference between focus groups, as was used in the paper I read, and interviews. We concluded that it might be easier for a person to "perform well", that is speak freely and really say what he/she want to say when interviewed individually. However in a focus group you might stumble upon other relevant topics to your research that appears when the participants inspire each other, or when someone has to defend a point that they are trying to make because someone else does not agree. I also added that I believe that a focus group will never be better than the moderators ability to influence the discussion. Stefan also spoke of this briefly at the end of the seminar, which for me was nice to hear.

In my paper the authors used their focus group in a different way than I was used to; they conducted their focus group meeting prior to defining their hypothesis and later based both their hypothesis and quantitative research questions on the results of the meeting. In my bachelor thesis I used a focus group when trying to make sense of the result of the questionnaires that were sent of before that. However it seems to be quite common to use a focus group before defining a hypothesis and other research questions as we partly talked about at the seminar. Our group also added a disadvantage of focus groups on the course home page about peoples intentions when deciding to participate in a focus group where you are payed in cash for your participation. We argued that it might lead to weaker results because some people only show up for the money. We thought that coffee and sugar would be better motivators.

Moving on we talked about the narrative method and the diary method which is getting more and more popular. The diary data gathering method seems to be easy to use for a researcher as the participants document what they experience and what they do while they do it. This of course means that the participants have to be very committed to the cause of the research, however this might be achieved by paying them or promising them an honorable mention for example. I presume that a challenge for the researcher is to design a diary template or some guidelines that are easy to follow for the participants in order to get as relevant information as possible. The narrative approach however is more a reflective one where the subjects are asked to write down what they have experienced afterwards. An advantage of this is of course that you have some time to reflect on what you did, however you might also forget some important or unimportant details.

Theme 6: Qualitative and Case Study research

Qualitative paper: Why do not satisfied consumers show reuse behavior? The context of online games (Tseng & Wang 2013).

This paper is about satisfied customers tendencies of reuse behavior is the specific context of online games. Research like this has been done before but very seldom in the context of a virtual community or an online environment, which is why I believe the authors choose to combine different research methods when gathering data (both qualitative and quantitative). The qualitative aspect of the research was the fact that they conducted two focus group meetings based on several observations that they made prior to both the group meetings and the recruiting. The results from the focus groups laid the foundation to a quantitative questionnaire from which they extracted some interesting statistics about reuse behavior.

The benefits of implementing a (or several) focus group(s) is that you get a chance to study certain questions in-depth with your target group (Wikipedia 2013). The subjects also get a chance to speak freely, and if you are lucky this might turn into a giving discussion that will benefit your research in some way. Of course, the person that is conducting the research has to be skilled at promoting a giving discussion. The focus groups performance will only be as good as the moderators ability to motivate discussion, in my opinion. In the paper I read the authors went into the focus group meeting without a clear hypothesis about their research, which was kind of an eye-opener to me. The hypothesis was defined from the subjects answers and after that they designed a questionnaire with close-ended questions in order to collect quantitative, statistical data.  I also learned that it seems to be quite common that you get paid as a participant in a focus group, and not only with pastries and coffee. If i were to give some constructive criticism on their qualitative data gathering it would be the fact that they only recruited one female participant and partly base their hypothesis about females in online games in general from that one participant. Since the subjects of the focus groups were recruited through an online forum, I think that they could have done a deeper search for female gamers in order to get more equal or equitable results.

Case study

A case study is a qualitative research design that is applied to a specific case, e.g. a company, a smaller group of people or some software (as was the case in the paper I read). A case study could for example be used to see if a design or a prototype will be successful in the chosen case. A case study requires an in-depth description of the entity being evaluated and all its circumstantial factors such as cultural norms, the demographic of the area, community values and motives (Writing@CSU 2013). It can for example be used to illustrate a concept, to pilot test a hypothesis, or as a source of critique.

Case study paper: Understanding users’ behavior with software operation data mining (Pachidi, Spruit, Van de Weerd 2013).

The authors start off well by defining some clear research questions and by explaining how they will use their knowledge from a literature study to design a prototype for data mining in a Dutch software company’s database over customers and their behavior while using a specific application (Exact Online). A natural byproduct of this is of course that every customer (every case) is theoretically useful when gathering results. They also use several data mining algorithms (for the same data clusters) at the same time to see which type will work best. In my opinion this strengthens their evidence (Eisenhardt 1989). One weakness might be that they mainly looked a quantitative data (big data clusters) and qualitative data was partly overlooked. When analyzing the results of the case study they compared different data clusters with each other and different data mining algorithms, and their results, mutually. Thus I argue that they indeed search for cross case patterns to a high extent. One thing that differs the paper from table 1 in Eisenhardt (1989) is that the authors did a literature study of conflicting and similar studies prior to their case study. They also construct their hypothesis in an earlier stage. The case study itself was only a part of the research process to test their prototype. In the end they draw some conclusions on how the prototype better could have been implemented and they ask for future research where the prototype is used on different kind of data as to reach closure. They also suggest that the prototype should be evaluated in terms of usability to a higher extent, as they did not put a lot of effort into that aspect.

Resources

Eisenhardt, M., 2013. Building Theories from Case. , 14(4), pp.532–550.

Pachidi, S., Spruit, M. & Van de Weerd, I., 2014. Understanding users’ behavior with software operation data mining. Computers in Human Behavior, 30, pp.583–594. Available at: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0747563213002884 [Accessed December 11, 2013].

Tseng, F.-M. & Wang, C.-Y., 2013. Why do not satisfied consumers show reuse behavior? The context of online games. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(3), pp.1012–1022. Available at: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0747563212003408 [Accessed December 13, 2013].

Wikipedia, Focus Groups - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_group [Accessed December 11, 2013].

Writing@CSU. Bronwyn Becker, Patrick Dawson, Karen Devine, Carla Hannum, Steve Hill, Jon Leydens, Debbie Matuskevich, Carol Traver, and Mike Palmquist.. (1994 - 2012). Case Studies. Colorado State University. Available at http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/guide.cfm?guideid=60. [Accessed December 13, 2013].

Theme 5: Reflection

In this weeks first lecture given by Ylva Fernaeus she began by adding some complimentary information that were not mentioned in her paper that we read. Ylva and her co-author wanted to design a new physical "programming language" called actDresses, and she mentioned that they were inspired by, for example, Curlybot which is a small robot that can repeat different movements after they are performed physically. The aim was to provide meaningful physical interaction with the robots, where signifiers that are code-based (commands) would be replaced by movements or other physical interactions. However some of us in the audience, including myself, did not agree on the meaningfulness of actDresses completely. 

One question that was asked by the audience that I found particularly interesting was what Ylva thought of the future of this concept. This question was very similar to the one I meant to ask but did not have to. I myself had difficulties imagining a bigger, commercially viable area where actDresses could be applied. However Ylva told us that ABB had been interested in the concept and how they could use it on their robots to see which "state" it was in. Unfortunately this did not result in anything concrete in the end, and I believe that the reason for this is that physical interaction is somewhat clumsier than for example interacting with a robot using your smartphone (via an app). 

Moving on, Ylva brought up some of her own questions that were quite interesting. For example, if the study were to be done today you could involve 3D printing for making your own comic signs and tags etcetera. Also, the qualitative aspects of this paper were that they observed the robots behaviour and made an analysis of it. It was kind of an eye opener to realize that a qualitative method does not have to be limited to focus groups or interviewing people but can be simply to observe a concept or design like actDresses that you base on prior research and expert knowledge. The fact that actDresses present something new and something that combine different areas and something that is analyzable makes it research. However this is a matter of definition in my opinion and if you are not careful you could end up with for example a design that is not motivated/analyzed/based on prior research enough to actually be called research.

The main points that I take with me from Haibo Li's lecture about the process from idea to prototype from an engineering perspective is that you have to define a problem that should be solved to become "the great". "The famous" researchers/doctors/professors spend 90% of their time on solving an existing problem. It is important that we go back to the origin of the problem and ask ourself whether the problem is defined correctly or if we can define it differently and do something great while at the same time contributing to our respective field of science. However to become "the great" we should not fool ourselves. We should constantly ask ourselves whether we are able to judge if the problem we are defining/solving is using breakthrough technology. To summarize, the art of engineering is to do the right things and to do them right. This lecture inspired me to really think about what kind of master thesis I want to do, and how I can get there.

Theme 5: Design research

Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses

This paper is about how one can use the sign system used in comics and the practices of clothing and accessorising to control the behaviour of physical interactive devices. This is done by a design study research in three different cases, the first being the accessorising and clothing of a robot pet (Pleo) and thus changing its behaviour via sensors (RFID tags), the second being making GlowBots do different things when attaching different physical tags to it and the third being attaching physical comic-style speech bubbles  on a robot vacuum cleaner to make it perform different tasks like avoiding light. It was interesting to see a concrete example of design research, i.e. research that proposes solutions via self designed prototypes, like this one and its many possibilities for evaluation and how the method can be used to improve a design or product. It seems to be very useful when one aim to make something more user friendly (Maier 2010) and when trying to make prototypes of different sorts for future evaluation.  

Question: Which would be the areas of usability for actDresses? Do the end-users actually want this kind of functionality?

Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration

What role will prototypes play in research?

I believe that prototypes can play a very important role in research due to its explaining and applying nature. For example it is my opinion that the logic in the paper by Haibo Li and colleagues would have been very hard to follow without their applied prototype. Prototypes play the role of sense making and applies the theory onto something real that we as readers (that often do not have the expert knowledge of the problem or theory at hand) can relate to and have as a basis for deeper understanding.

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

A proof of concept prototype is necessary when you are trying to persuade the readers/users that the theory will work. It demonstrates the feasibility of the concept or theory and is often used on a very specific, or narrow, case (Wikipedia 2013a) as they did in the paper we read for this weeks theme. It may also lay the foundation for future design work in my opinion. It might both tell what to do and how to do something as well as what not to do and how to not do it regarding the design or application of the prototype.

How can design research be communicated/presented?

I believe that the most effective way to communicate or present your design research is through an implemented prototype of some sort. Of course, since design research is an iterative process you can always present it present it by its constituents, like for example what the results of a user testing was or what the target group thought of the idea or design before it was prototyped. In my opinion the research “has to” be presented with some kind of visual aid, for example via videos, mock-ups or graphs etcetera, in order for it to be able to communicate its message.  

Resources

Fernaeus, Y. & Jacobsson, M., 2009. Comics , Robots , Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses. , p.3–8.

Maier, Andrew - UXBooth - Complete Beginners Guide to Design Reserach - http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/complete-beginners-guide-to-design-research [Retreived on December 4 2013]

Sun, J., Liu, L. & Li, H., 2008. Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball : Rendering. , 10(6), p.1022–1033.

Wikipedia 2013, a - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_concept [Retreived on December 6 2013]

Theme 4: Reflection

During the second seminar this week Olle Bälter spoke of pros and cons with using qualitative and quantitative methods as well as with paper and web questionnaires. Olle went on by telling us about his background working at Karolinska Institutet where they often conduct big, mostly qualitative, questionnaires. It was interesting to hear that the price of one respondent was roughly 500 crowns (with the printing, distribution, pilot testing etc. already included). Olle made a point about how medical schools often are very good at carrying out big questionnaires and that other fields have much to learn from it (including computer science and media technology).

After this we moved on by playing two rounds of Boggle, one concerning qualitative and quantitative methods and the other one concerning paper versus web questionnaires. In the first round some interesting points were made. One of them came from our group and concerned qualitative methods and that you often carry them out and use the collected qualitative data when constructing questionnaires (to collect quantitative data). Personally I at first argued that quantitative methods often are used in relatively new fields where a lot of research does not  exist yet, and that you use this collected statistical data to conduct qualitative research. I had to forfeit my argument due to the general opinion of the rest of the class, that differed from mine. I did not get a Boggle point. We did however get a point for pointing out that the result of quantitative data are easier to visualize (with graphs and charts).

Concerning the pros and cons with using paper versus web questionnaires our group pointed out that a limitation with using paper questionnaires is that sometimes you cannot see what people wrote due to their terrible handwriting. We also concluded that paper is in fact platform independent, which Olle placed great importance on. After this the argument that web questionnaires are better for the environment came up. This was quickly shot down. I argue that it totally depends on how many questionnaires we are talking about. The energy consumption of peoples personal computers and the server halls that hosts the web page can add up to a lot if the number of participants are high. Paper questionnaires are of course not very environmentally friendly either with the transport by trucks/planes/boats and the two fold sending process. If I were to say something positive about both methods it would be that paper questionnaires can be used by everybody at all times as well as the fact that web questionnaires can offer some feedback to the respondent while he/she are answering the questions, as Olle showed us an example of. You can also include video and sound into a web questionnaire. Olle also made a good point about trying to avoid the use of the word “not” in your questions as to avoid double negations. All and all I really enjoyed this seminar/lecture!