Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research - postreflection

This week we were asked to find a paper that wrote about a qualitative method. We were also asked to find a paper that used a case study.  Since I found one paper that fulfilled both of these requirements, I chose just that one. Just as the last few weeks, I feel frustration over the fact that we do not get any guidance about how to find good papers. I really think that this course should include guidance on how to find a good paper that is related to the subject that you are looking for. Especially since it is usually easy to find pro’s and con’s for different qualitative/quantitative methods, but so much harder to find information about how to find good papers online.

Despite the fact that we do not get any good information about how to find the papers, I think that it is good to read a lot of different papers. It is especially good to be critical when reading the papers, and that we have to find parts that could have been done another way. This is since it is always parts that could have been done differently, and therefore maybe affected the results of the study. In some papers, I consider that it is more difficult to find the “flaws”, but in the end it is always something that could have been done different.

When discussing during the seminar, I got the impression that a lot of the papers used interview as the qualitative method. In general, this seems to be one of the most common one. During the seminar we also talked a bit about how different ways of conducting the interview might have an effect on the result. Some authors who did interview chose to do them differently, so they conducted one interview face-to-face while another one was conducted on skype and a third one was conducted on the phone. It was therefore harder to see if the difference in the answers were because of the different ways of the interviews or if it were because of something else. We also talked a bit about how to do when interviewing children, since it is a lot different than interviewing an adult. The most important I think is to, before the interview, really think through who are the person that you are going to interview, and how should you act. I think one of the biggest challenges with interview is that you can not do exactly the same way on every interview because every person you interview is different from the rest.   

Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

I read the paper “Who’s Watching Whom? A Study of Interactive Technology and Surveillance” written by Lee Humphreys. The study “explores how people think about privacy issues and personal information when using new interactive technologies”

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

The qualitative method used in this study is in-depth interviews. One benefit with using interview as the qualitative method is that it is easier to ask follow-up questions and gain a deeper understanding. The method usually provides more complete feedback than qualitative methods.

There are limitations as well with this method. One being that analyzing the data is much more time consuming. Another being that the person making the interview might influence the answer of the participant.

What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?

Since I am right now taking a course where we actually are having a project were we are conducting a qualitative observations I did not get any new knowledge from this paper. The method that the author is using is very common and therefore I am familiar with the procedure.

Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?

I consider that one of the main methodological problems in the study is the way that the author chose to conduct the interview. He has conducted interviews in different ways. Some he conducted face-to-face whiles some were conducted via telephone or internet. This may have influenced the result and I consider that it would have been better if the author have tried to conduct all interviews in a similar way.

Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.

In case studies, as the name implies, a certain case is examined. This research method aims to obtain a deeper understanding by using empirical data. You want to get deeper knowledge and understanding of a specific situation. The studied case can be different things, for example a group of people or an incident. It is of importance not to confuse qualitative research, even thou this can be used in a case study. The case study can be investigating, explanatory or descriptive.

Use the "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" (Eisenhardt, summarized in Table 1) to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your selected paper.

Since Humphreys in the paper “Who’s Watching Whom? A Study of Interactive Technology and Surveillance” also had conducted a case study, I chose that paper for both of the assignments. Humphreys has chose to investigate how people are thinking about privacy issues and personal information when using new interactive technologies. The research question is clearly defined but when reading the paper it appears to me that Humphreys does not agree when a lot of the participants do not consider the privacy issue as an actually issue. This problem might be because Humphreys consider the privacy issue to be something else than the participants, and even if he tried to define “privacy issue” in a good way, he failed. Or it might just be that the participants do not agree with him.

Another weakness was that Humphreys was not able to follow all the participants when using the service that he was evaluated. He only followed some and saw how they used the service. This resulted in that he had a different amount of information from different participants and how they use the service.

Even thou I think that he should have conducted all the interview in a similar way, it appears as if he got a lot of information that he has presented in a good way.  

Unfortunately I could not go to both of the lectures, I could just attend to the one that Haibo held.

I do not consider that Habio talked exclusively about design research, which was the theme for this week. I actually do not consider that he actually talked much about research at all. Instead he spent a lot of time talking about how to define a problem and what is a problem. For example he mentioned that it is more important to spend a lot of the time on defining the problem rather than solve it (he called this the Habio theory). According to the Haibo theory, 90% of the time should be spent on defining the problem and 10% should be spent trying to solve it.

During the lecture he also mentioned that it is important to be realistic when talking about problems and solutions. He also told a story about if a professor and a student met a bear, the student did not have to be able to outrun the bear. The student just had to be able to outrun the professor to survive. I think that what Haibo tried to say with this story is that the same problem has different solutions depending on who is looking at it.

This weeks lecture and literature did not give me much new knowledge. But instead it was a reminder that is it important to have a well defined problem. Usually it is harder to find a very well formulated problem, than to actually solve it. Therefore it was good that Haibo mentioned this again. Also it is important to remember that not everybody that works with the problem do have the same background, and depending of whom you talk to, the solution might be different. This is something that also was mentioned during the weeks when Dalhberg held the seminars. That this topic is mentioned over and over again shows the importance of have it in mind. But personally I think that it would have been interesting if the person holding the lecture did mention new topics.

The paper Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses, is written by Ylva Fernaeus and Mattias Jacobsson. The paper concerns the “design of physical languages for controlling and programming robotic consumer products”.
 
Today, it is no longer clear the areas for where it is possible to use programming and different areas are also merging together. It is no longer given that programming need to be done on a screen since there are more areas where it is possible to use it. But one additional work that Fernaeus och Jacobsson is saying is necessary is to “explore how to create visually effective and easily understandable ways to represent physical program actions”. Therefore, they are exploring the possibility of using design and comics together in physical language design.
 
Both clothes and comics are extensively used and understood in popular culture. The authors is inspired by these two sign systems and by combining them the authors want to explore how it can control the behavior of physical interactive devices. But it is also pointed out that signs “become signs only when they are loaded with meanings that make them stand for something other than themselves”. Hence, it is important to have the consumer and their background in mind when designing this, or any other kind, of system.
 
The study that Fernaeus och Jacobsson do is interesting and it is without a doubt a area where a lot is  going on right now. The experimenting with merging different fields together (like merging comics, fashion and programming) for making new products that are more personalized for the costumer I believe will be bigger and bigger. 

What different areas could we, as soon-to-be-engineers, see are merged together in the future?
 
How can media technologies be evaluated?
Obviously there is not one answer to this question. Since, within media technology, there is a lot of different technologies and these can be evaluated in many different ways. Depending on the system, I think that observation or user tests may be a good way to evaluate. During these different kinds of evaluations, it can become very clear to the developer what the weaknesses are.  

What role will prototypes play in research?
Already nowadays I would say that prototypes have an important role in many researches. Since systems a lot of the time acts different from what was expected and assumed, it is relevant to examine how it actually work in real life. Prototypes are also a good way to discover unexpected errors and become aware of aspects that was not considered before.
I can not see any reasons why the importance of prototypes would change. I would rather say that in the future it might even be more important to do prototypes. Since the technology gets more and more complex and are implemented in different areas, it is important to know that it will actually work before doing it. Even if prototyping can be expensive, it is usually more expensive to implement a system that does not work.

What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?
A prototype is built to demonstrate or try what the final product is supposed to do. I would say that I prototype is a simplified version of the final product, or some of the features of the final product. But since it is not the final product, it has limitations. If the goal is to test one feature of the product, the limitation could be that it is hard to see how this feature actually would work with the rest of the product. For example, I was once asked to test a device for controlling the computer by eye tracking. But since I could only scroll up and down, and were not able to click on any links, it was hard for me to say what the major problem was since I did not try it during normal circumstances.

Theme 4: Quantitative research - post reflections

This week both the preparations and seminars have been interesting. Just as last week we were asked to find a paper on our own that we found interesting and that were relevant to media technology. According to me this is a good approach for the reason that every person has the opportunity to find a paper they have interest in reading.

One thing that I though about a lot this week is concerning the subject. We were not asked to find a paper that considered a specific topic but instead we were asked to find a method that was used in the paper. I found this a bit frustrating that we were left with only these instructions. I am not questioning the fact that we should be able to search for papers and information ourselves, because we should be able to do that. But to my knowledge it is very rare that in research you only search for papers using a certain method rather than searching for paper that it relevant to the subject which you are writing about. But even if I am mistaken, I do think that we should have gotten some more information on good ways to do it, or things that can be good to considerate when doing it. This is because we are after all actually taking this class to learn this, not because we know this.

During the first seminar we were, just as last week, divided into smaller groups and asked to first present our paper to the other persons in the small group and then chose one. It is interesting to hear what other articles people read. In the smaller groups we were also asked to do “flow charts” of the paper that we chose. I believe this method can be useful, for example during a presentation to make it visual and clear what the paper is about.

The second seminar was the most interesting of the two this week. I appreciated that Olle chose to use a different approach at the seminar than usual. I got the impression that it was easier for everyone to participate in the discussion. It also created a good opportunity to discuss different topics, which of course is the point with seminars. But during some seminars it is hard to maintain a good, and relevant, discussion. During this seminar I did not feel that this was a problem. Some points that were made during the discussion gave me new insights concerning qualitative vs. quantitative studies and I believe that this knowledge will help we in the future.